Whit Stillman Quotes

Our roots are clinging, we shouldn't knock down so many old 'buildings.'

I can talk about Jane Austen until the cows come home.

I think Austin is read more now than Charles Dickens, and Dickens was much more popular in his day. She endures because of her classicism.

I'm for people clinging. I'm pro-clinging.

Find someone hypersocial and crazy and try not to follow them to their doom, but to make friends with their nicer friends.

There's some people who are just very dynamic about social life, and it can be some pretty crazy stuff, but you end up meeting people you like.

I think it's helpful to aspire to make films if you feel that other people are not doing what you want to do.

You can't go by what the governments say or do. It's not the governments. It's on the street where there's more hatred of Americans in Britain than in France.

I've had no money, absolutely, from my family. They paid for a good education - or schools that purported to be a good education - but, um, not a dime.

It's terrible to write what are essentially comedies for people with no sense of humor. Everyone thinks they have a sense of humor, but observably not.

It becomes a lot better for the actors when we're 'shooting, shooting, shooting,' instead of waiting around in a trailer for something to happen.

[ Lady Susan novel by Jane Austen is] extremely difficult to adapt. I worked on it for years, for, like, ten years, before I started showing it to people. This was my back-burner project.

I call the '70s the "golden age of television"; in the early '70s there were sensationally good shows.

I love watching the romantic comedies of the late '50s and early '60s. I used to have a rule that if Tony Randall's in it, it can't be bad.

I find it really disturbing to be watching a lot of the medium that I'm trying to work in. I prefer to be doing things that are farther away.

I originally wanted to be F. Scott Fitzgerald, but failed.

[Jerome David] Salinger was really taken to the cleaners by nasty critics in his day. I think Joan Didion was one of the people who attacked him in a very unfair way.

We learned some bad things, and the Vietnam War led to some bad conclusions. We're not the greatest generation, that's for sure.

For me, the present is a golden era. That's the greatest golden era. Right now. I just like pining for lost times.

I decided the moment I graduated from college that I would never wear blue jeans again. And I have never worn blue jeans again.

The Cha-Cha is no more ridiculous than life itself.

When I'm writing fiction, I read nonfiction or biographies. Now I'm watching very old movies or old foreign films. I don't immerse myself in whatever's going on in whatever area I'm working in.