Quotessence
Home / Authors / David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg Quotes

Filmmaker

Filter quotes by topic

AllThinkingFilmIfsArtAudienceBodyDifferentPeopleHumansKnows

Famous David Cronenberg Quotes

“Arosteguy poured more sake for both of them. "I love warm sake. How brilliant to create a drink at body temperature." He shook his head. "The Japanese. Feared by the West for so long, and now fading into their beloved sunrise. Or sunset. First militarily, then economically, and now, only gastronomically. And I need to become Japanese at a time when everyone wants to become Chinese. The Chinese call the Japanese 'the little people,' I've been told. That could have to do with the miniaturization of island species. I must do a study.”

SakeJapanese Culture
Book:Consumed
Create image

“We offhandedly devised many imaginary scenarios during the course of any given day, a habit that began as acerbic banter between two hypersharp intelligences, whose function seemed to be to absorb the venom of normal mundane tensions, anxieties, jealousies, resentments, and nano-betrayals, but gradually transformed into a daily hedge against death, an acknowledgement of our painful ephemerality, and a bid to take the kitchen utensils of mortality out of the hands of happenstance and put them back into our own drawer.”

ViolenceMatricideSenescence
Book:Consumed
Create image

“It was apparent to me that religion was an invented thing, a wish-fulfillment thing, a fantasy thing. It was much more real, dangerous, to accept that mortality was the end for you as an individual. As an atheist, I don't believe in an afterlife, so if you're thinking of murder, if your subject is murder, then that's a physical act of absolute destruction because you're ending something, a body, that is unique. That person never existed before, will never exist again, will not be karmically recycled, will not go to heaven, therefore I take it seriously.”

IfsThinkingBelievePersonsRealEndsBodyIndividualHeavenWishAcceptingFantasySubjectsDangerousUniqueDestructionMurderAbsolutesDon't BelieveAtheistFulfillmentMortalityAfterlifeRecycled
Author:David Cronenberg
Create image

“Casting is really a black art. It's a huge part of directing and it's the most invisible. It's one that people don't really think about or talk about. But you can really destroy your movie by casting it badly before you've shot a foot of film. And yet there are no guidebooks for it, there's no rule book to tell you how to do it. It's all your own experience and your own sensibility and your own intuition.”

PeopleThinkingArtBookFilmBlackFeetHugeShotsIntuitionInvisibleSensibilityCastingBlack Art
Author:David Cronenberg
Create image

“For me, it's just a normal artistic endeavour to explore the dark side. Certainly, I'm not alone in it. Artists generally don't like to accept the version of reality that society and culture hand them. They want to know what's really going on. So you're always looking in the ceilings, under the floorboards and behind the walls, trying to find the mechanisms, the structures, and the truth. I find that often leads you into some dark places.”

KnowsWantTryingHandsRealityArtistCultureSidesDarkBehindsAcceptingWallNormalStructureVersionsArtisticMechanismNot AloneCeilingsDark SideEndeavourDark PlacesSociety And Culture
Author:David Cronenberg
Create image

“I have no rules. For me, it's a full, full experience to make a movie. It takes a lot of time, and I want there to be a lot of stuff in it. You're looking for every shot in the movie to have resonance and want it to be something you can see a second time, and then I'd like it to be something you can see 10 years later, and it becomes a different movie, because you're a different person. So that means I want it to be deep, not in a pretentious way, but I guess I can say I am pretentious in that I pretend. I have aspirations that the movie should trigger off a lot of complex responses.”

WayWantShouldYearsMeanPersonsI CanDifferentStuffShotsResponseComplexesAspirationTriggersPretentiousResonance
Author:David Cronenberg
Create image

“For me, the first fact of human existence is the human body. But if you embrace the reality of the human body, you embrace mortality, and that is a very difficult thing for anything to do because the self-conscious mind cannot imagine non-existence. It's impossible to do.”

IfsMindFirstsHumansSelfFactsBodyRealityDifficultExistenceImagineImpossibleConsciousEmbraceMortalityHuman BodySelf ConsciousDifficult ThingsHuman ExistenceConscious MindNon Existence
Author:David Cronenberg
Create image