When you're dealing with the world of dreams, the psyche, and potential of a human mind, there has to be emotional stakes. You have to deal with issues of memory and desire.

I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world's still there. (Leonard Shelby, Memento)

I always thought the joy of reading a book is not knowing what happens next. (Leonard Shelby, Memento)

You're never going to learn something as profoundly as when it's purely out of curiosity

A camera is a camera, a shot is a shot, how you tell the story is the main thing.

I like films that continue to spin your head in all sorts of different directions after you've seen them.

You musn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.

One of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself.

Every film should have its own world, a logic and feel to it that expands beyond the exact image that the audience is seeing.

Every great story deserves a great ending

I've always believed that if you want to really try and make a great film, not a good film, but a great film, you have to take a lot of risks.

Just because you consider yourself a genius doesn't mean you are smart.

The time to being writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say.

When the cat gets hungry, it starts to steal.

It is a myth, not a mandate, a fable not a logic, a symbol rather than reason by which men are moved.

I have just dropped into the very place I have been seeking, but in everything it exceeds all my dreams.

War is a foolish, childish, animalistic, unthinking, unintelligent way of trying to accomplish a purpose.

Il n'y a pas d'autre univers qu'un univers humain, l'univers de la subjectivite humaine. There is no other universe except the human universe, the universe of human subjectivity.

At the present moment, the security of coherent philosophy, which existed from Parmenides to Hegel, is lost.

You should look straight at a film; that's the only way to see one. Film is not the art of scholars but of illiterates.

A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant.