Mani Ratnam Quotes

I've spent my life pursing excellence as an artist, which is what I always wanted to do anyhow.

So many features at Sundance seemed to be powered more on the director's need to be a director than any particular story.

Nobody sets out to make a bad film - I shouldn't say 'nobody.' Some people certainly don't care.

I'm just trying to up my films - how every film should be better than the previous one. That's what I struggle for.

I've worked with Terrence Malick, Werner Herzog, Olive Stone and David Gordon Green, and Damien Chazelle on 'First Man.' When you have someone at the helm like that, they're gonna make something great.

You have to find something that you have to obsess over if you're making a movie about it. As a director, you have to be able to pick something that excites you enough that you can breathe it every day.

I feel I want to grow as an actress and be better. I want to progress as a singer and songwriter, and produce movies and everything. So there'll be no time when I feel I've done it all.

As I get into it more, I want to grow as an artist, as an entertainer, and basically perfect my craft.

One of my great goals when I first started taking photographs or showing them publicly is that people might want one for over their desk. That's my goal.

I think anything Tony Kaye would've done would've been interesting, definitely. And worth seeing.

Everything I've ever written, I had a very distinct vision of what I wanted it to look like. But, other directors never do it that way.

Ang Lee is very precise. He will show you everything, and will let you know what he is thinking about the whole project. There are a lot of rehearsals before shooting, and you already reach a certain standard. Then he will ask for more.

I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do.

I never come away from a film thinking I nailed it.

My motivations are thinking I can write better songs, that the concerts can be better.

Even as a kid in drawing class, I had real ambition. I wanted to be the best in the class, but there was always some other feller who was better; so I thought, 'It can't be about being the best, it has to be about the drawing itself, what you do with it.' That's kind of stuck with me.

When you are making the one you are doing, you think it is the greatest film going. And then you do another one and it is a great film.

No one sets out to make a bad movie or disappoint anybody.

I love working with Bob Zemeckis. I think he's amazing and wonderful to work with.

It's not about the script: it's about who the director is and who the other people in the cast are. Because you can look at a great script and execute it in a very sophomoric way, and you can look at an OK script, and you can execute it in a very sophisticated way and come out with something really good.

As an artist, you're always going to be yearning and wanting and never satisfied. I never feel like I've really achieved something.

I aspired to make 'Tum Bin II' better than my first film, if not as good as 'Tum Bin.'

A long and productive career in the world of films is bound to be checkered with success and failures. You cannot have one without the other; the only way not to make a flop is not to make a film.

Krishna Vamsi is a very good director.

I have to keep making films, getting better in my craft, and the way to do that is to work with people who know what they're doing and who can help me.