J. J. Abrams Quotes

The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it.

Making a movie and not directing the little moments is like drinking a soda and leaving the little slurp puddle for someone else.

The beauty of doing film is that you construct whatever you do block by block and you can build something that will stay.

When you create a movie, you create something in your image.

As a director, I'm not the one animating every frame, every shot. I'm moving around like a surgeon on rounds, or a farmer checking in on all the plants being grown, pruning and adjusting. For me, it's a very exciting job.

Everybody is always trying to make the best movie they can. It's a process.

I think I'm drawn to films more as a director with a directorial mind even as an actor. I make movies to make the films, not to act.

Writing and directing your own film, for me, has been the best experience of my life.

As far as writing or directing a film, I've worked with enough people who have done that that I know it's just a whole other level of responsibility and chaos and murder that I could not see happening. For now, I'm just going to see what comes. I know what I like and what direction I have.

I have considered the directing, actually. Not so much the writing. That is not really interesting, but the directing is really interesting to me.

There's some things that you learn as you're shooting, and as you're editing that are key, because when you start you don't have the brain that can finish it. You don't really know what it is, and that's the key job; figuring out what you actually have, not what you're dreaming of having.

I knew that I'd end up directing because I'm so hands-on with my films.

Directing is creating a whole. You're able to combine different elements and create a film that is unique and true to your vision.

I think films are bigger than structure.

Directing was easy for me because I was a writer director and did all my directing when I wrote the screenplay.

Being behind the camera is where I feel comfortable. I've found something that I feel I, as 'Michael,' can be as confident in as 'Johnny' was on the stage. It's great being part of the creative process. You're right at the start of an idea, and you get to see it all the way through till the end.

My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.

I think each movie-making process is a very exhausting and satisfying and fulfilling experience for me.

I want to act for the rest of my life - and I also want to pursue directing. Watching Bill Condon direct 'Twilight' kind of made me think, 'OK yeah, I really want to do this now.' This idea that you can make an image in your head and be in full control of how it comes out - I thought that was really cool.

I don't know how to make movies without getting my hands dirty.

Making a movie is a network of decisions that keep multiplying as you go. You leave a trail of decisions behind you, and that's how you start to see the shape of what you've done. When you get far enough, you turn around and say, 'Ha, that's the movie.' It's only then that you find out if it's going to work or not.

Making a film - particularly what I think is a good film - is the result of a team of people, and the end result has many, many hands on it.

I think making a film is as much knowing what you don't like as what you do like, and avoiding the things that you don't like like the plague and making sure that they never appear onscreen in any shape or form.

In order to make a film, you have to operate on many different levels, making all these different forms of expression converse, and so I just followed that intuition.

With film, so much is in the director's hands. Once something is cut together - unless you're in the editing room - you don't really remember what the alternatives are.