Ethan Hawke Quotes

I want to make movies about my country from my point of view.

I think there's nothing more wonderful than using fiction to reflect real-world cultural ideas.

Fashion is not separate from art. It is inextricably woven into how we open ourselves to the world and articulates the exchanges of power both real and imagined.

By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.

I think the documentary is something that people are hungry for, that it embodies careful thought, nuance.

I think a lot of Indians want Indian artists to be cultural cheerleaders rather than cultural investigators.

The writer is the visionary of his people... He anticipates, he warns.

I make my films because I'm affected by a situation, by something that makes me want to reflect on it, that lends itself to an artistic reflection. I always aim to look directly at what I'm dealing with. I think it's a task of dramatic art to confront us with things that in the entertainment industry are usually swept under the rug.

Mainstream animated movies are dumbed-down and sanitised: they make the world in their own image rather than exploring the limitless possibilities that are out there.

Obviously when it comes to the question of telling stories about other people's lives in a situation as political as South Africa, you get to be political.

I think cinema is the memory and the imagination of the country. Take the memory and imagination out of an individual, and he stops being an individual. I think it's the same thing for a country.

A movie is about human beings, about humanity.

My goal is to make as many films as possible about different aspects of American life.

The thing that keeps me being a performer is my interest in society's obsession with identity, because I'm not sure that I really believe identity exists.

Feature film can have a major role in explaining ideas and describing peoples' lives and their struggles.

I like to explore different ideas of race, how the concept of race has evolved in the country. It's one thing I enjoy talking about, but I don't feel compelled to talk about it.

I love telling the experience of a black male in America, but modern, not always having to go back to a period piece to remind people where we come from. It's more a modern sense of where we are today and where we want to go in the future. So I try to choose projects somewhere around that space.

Daring to make films of any kind and thus invite the possibility of ridicule was an internal battle of mine for many years as I worked on the screenplay for what would become 'Dear White People' beginning at the end of George W. Bush's second term.

If we can make more diverse colors, people, stories, it will be interesting. Uniforms are for the military and the police, not for our thinking.

I think that our task as filmmakers is to create the most insightful reality given the most pressing questions.

Cinema is a reflection of society and, in most cases, has the ability to be a mirror and not just show the problems but also give solutions and help them reach a large number of people through faces and voices that matter.

That's what independent filmmaking does: it gives the underdog a voice, a shot.

Fashion weeks tend to be places of refuge for outsiders.

I have always been a fan of Mahesh Manjrekar's work. I like the way he tells his stories. He manages to focus on aspects of human beings and of society, which we don't often see in cinema.

I want to be able to bring out stories like 'Verna,' as well as stories which are of the modern and new generation like 'Ho Mann Jahaan,' which is a film I did of the youth of Pakistan.