Oliver Stone Quotes

I've been accused, many times, as a writer/director, of my pace being too leisurely and too long.

You always have three movies that you have to reduce into one. You have the screenplay. And then, you do a workshop and you add more scenes. And then, on the day you shoot, there's more action and interaction. It's like a souffle. It has a tendency to just grow and explode, and it's just too long.

Having made films, I know very well that the scope of the average 90- to 120-minute movie is about the same narrative heft as a long short story or a novella.

When the world throws you too much information, the only way you can stay sane or survive is to look for pattern recognition. Amidst all the blurs, is there a constellation that emerges, is there a straight line that's emerging. I think as long as you keep your mind in the palce where you're actively looking for patterns, you may not be safe, but you're going to feel safe, I think.

My movies are pretty tight and they're pretty well-paced. I'm not one to make long movies. I don't dwell on stuff.

I believe in the not-too-distant future, people are going to learn to trust their information to the Net more than they now do, and be able to essentially manage very large amounts and perhaps their whole lifetime of information in the Net with the notion that they can access it securely and privately for as long as they want, and that it will persist over all the evolution and technical changes.

I think we are definitely suffering from an information overload, but I believe that there is going to be better and better ways of organizing that information and processing it so that it will enhance your daily life. I just think that technology and information, it's overwhelming at the moment, but it's really going to make life better.

When everybody has access to an avalanche of information, becoming a master thinker is very important in your life-long security.

Some plague the people with too long sermons; for the faculty of listening is a tender thing, and soon becomes weary and satiated.

The fact is that, unless you are very good, most first movies are too long, and you lose your rhythm and your audience over two or three hours.

The danger is to stupidly believe that depicting facts gives us much insight. If facts were the only thing that counted, the telephone directory would be the book of books.

If things were half as bad as some people persist in believing, I'd have retired with a bottle of Scotch and a pistol a long time ago.

For me, it doesn't matter whether it's a comedy, a Western or horror. As long as you've got a good story to tell, the genre almost doesn't matter. As an actor playing the role, it's all rooted in reality.

There are so many things we've been brought up to believe that it takes you an awfully long time to realize that they aren't you.

Key to all fiction, long or short, is to remember that the wolfman did not want the moon.

I do study Marcel Proust, for multiple technical virtuosities but also his swerve, as you say, between characters and in scenes. Certain films can help for that, too, in terms of understanding how multiple conversations at a table, or in a room, can take place and remain separate, and dissonant, and also gather themselves, accidentally, into a collective rhythm and an affect.

Women have a right, I believe, to do whatever they want as long as they don't break the law.

We've long felt that the only value of stock forecasters is to make fortune tellers look good. Even now, Charlie and I continue to believe that short-term market forecasts are poison and should be kept locked up in a safe place, away from children and also from grown-ups who behave in the market like children.

Heroes know that things must happen when it is time for them to happen. A quest may not simply be abandoned; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever; a happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.

In the [John F.] Kennedy case, I believe the absence of a conspiracy can be proved to a virtual certainty.

Most people don't like to think. This is why human religions are so popular. It almost doesn't matter what the belief system is, as long as it's firm, consistent, clear in its expectation of the follower, and rigid. Given those characteristics, you can find people who believe in almost anything. It's God's way, they say. God's word. And there are those who will accept that. Gladly. Because, you see, it eliminates the need to think.

We have this huge, massive information, but what is it that matters? What doesn't matter? What makes sense, what doesn't make sense? You have to have a framework for understanding and of interpretation in order to make use of the information.

I don't believe in premarital sex. It enabled me to date three or four women at the same time, because as long as I wasn't having sex with them, I could always just walk away.

Always good to take a look at the long list for the Mann Booker, for the Commonwealth. It gives you an overview.There is so much going on all over the world that it's impossible for one person to keep up. And I can't.

No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read.