Walter Murch Quotes

I'm just trying to tell a good story and make thought-provoking, entertaining films. I just try and draw upon the great culture we have as a people, from music, novels, the streets.

Motion pictures are the art form of the 20th century, and one of the reasons is the fact that films are a slightly corrupted artform. They fit this century - they combine Art and business!

I have to say that movies have as much impact on me as music. And that I learned as much about narrative from movies as I did from reading novels, how to arrange stories, how to juxtapose things.

There are very few films that work like a novel.

Music runs through everything I do - I even think musically; even when I was acting, but, especially, when I am directing. Directing is very musical.

Film is just a great medium to express yourself and a great environment to work around.

Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.

I live cinema and passionately love music, and my efforts in both these crafts are unfolding.

Music is very influential to my writing, as are theater and film.

Godard is incredibly brilliant, the things he says. Apparently here in France, the most interesting thing when a new film of his is going to come out are his press conferences, because he's so brilliant.

Although for some people cinema means something superficial and glamorous, it is something else. I think it is the mirror of the world.

The beauty of cinema is that it can do some things that novels just can't.

I began to exercise a lot of cinematic muscle with the precepts I had learned in the New York art world. Film was intriguing. I began to think of art as elitist; film was not.

Movies were very important. The art-form of the 20th century.

Cinema is visually powerful, it is a complete experience, reaches a different audience. It's something I really like. I like movies.

There are parallels between the music and film worlds, but they're really very different. I feel like they're just two different ways to channel my creativity.

My duty is to try to reach beauty. Cinema is emotion. When you laugh you cry.

I think cinema has this beautiful component. It's a universal language.

Film is very much a universal and common voice, and we can't limit it to one particular culture.

At its best, cinema does retain a remarkable ability to speak to people of every age, from every background, and in ways that almost any other art form in popular culture struggles to compete with.

To me, cinema is not a movie or a TV screen, and it's not a seat in a building versus one in your living room. It's the art of motion pictures.

Cinema is arguably the 20th century's most influential art form.

A movie is really provocation. It's not a message, it's not a statement.

The language of film is further and further away from the language of theater and is closer to music. It's abstract but still narrative.

I can use movie as a language. Not only could it send a good message, I could let people know about my thinking and how I see the world, how I see the colour, how I see the music, how I see everything.