Spike Jonze Quotes

Films are artifice. We're telling stories on film. At the same time, when it works, there is a real tough immediacy and spontaneity to it, and a punch.

What I find most satisfying about photography is the way in which it allows me to document 'reality' while at the same time creating my own version thereof; in other words, the reality I present is a reality based upon what I choose to include in the frame and what I choose to leave out.

For a long time, I was brilliantly achieving drawings that were inert, suffocating and dark. If ever you need illustrations that are inert, suffocating and dark, I know how to do them.

I didn't have any set idea of what kind of filmmaker I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to tell stories that meant something to me, but I never said I was going to be the weird, avant-garde guy.

Cinema is still a very young art form with extraordinary techniques and very impressive special effects but sometimes it seems the soul has been taken out of things.

I like to feel that all my best photographs had strong personal visions and that a photograph that doesn't have a personal vision or doesn't communicate emotion fails.

Anything you can imagine, you can put on film.

I come up with the ideas for my videos, and I write the lyrics and choreograph them, and I direct them and tell everyone what to do and how I want them to sing the parts and do the tongue pops and eye rolls and stuff like that.

A film is - or should be - more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what's behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

I like to give dimension to shots inside action scenes. It's demanding because you have to rehearse a lot of things happening at the same time and frame all those things in a shot. But I feel like when you accomplish that then you've got a cool action scene.

You often hear this about directors, how it's like having the best set of toys. This fabulous train set, the biggest box of toys that a kid could possibly have. The best directors look like a kid having more fun than you're supposed to have.

My films are an extension of my poetry, using the white screen like the white page to be filled with images.

I've seen 'Babel' four times. And each time I realize anew what a monumental project that had been for me.

I'm a huge fan of animation, and just the arts in general - anything that emanates from someone's mind and soul and is capable of touching other people's minds and souls.

I love picture books - with picture books, you can use words and pictures as a double act, even tell two different versions of a story at the same time.

My favorite types of movies definitely aren't thrillers, but at the same time you can't deny the genius of Hitchcock's films.

Through a painting we can see the whole world.

The cinema is there to heighten the imagination; I have always tried to make sure it does so.

The directors that I end up having a really good time with are the ones that understand the fluidity of the medium and are interested in catching lightning in a bottle.

I have a hard time articulating the emotional experience of working on a film. Even when I have meetings on films or discussing them with directors, I find that's my biggest challenge. Different words mean different things to people.

When I saw 'Talk to Her' for the first time, I was crying out loud because I couldn't imagine that I was doing that film.

Film provides an opportunity to marry the power of ideas with the power of images.

Fellini and Bunuel changed my life for me, they are my favourites. If it is true that movies are dreams, both of them, Fellini and Bunuel were shooting in a dream way.

You can mix in certain sensitivities as a filmmaker.

For me, cinema's like a language - everyone has their own form of it.