Jonathan Levine Quotes

A movie that's about other horror movies isn't interesting. A movie about who we are, is.

My work generally tends to be an all-out, 360-degree subversive take on everything, most of all my own notion of myself as a son, father, husband, human being and male in this culture.

I think what's so brilliant about 'Black Mirror' is that it is a mirror into our own messed-up psyches.

If you're an adult who takes 'Made in Chelsea' seriously, I suggest you take a look at yourself.

One of my pleasures is observing people's behavior and pointing out the inconsistencies that we all sort of have at the center of our lives.

What's so exciting and unstoppable about the horror genre is that I view it all as metaphorical exploration. It's the safe place that we, as a culture, can deal with things that upset and frighten us - the darker side of our nature.

Little mirrors were attached to the front of their cars, at which they glanced to see where they had been; then they stared ahead again. I had thought that only beetles had this delusion of Progress.

What's important to me about horror stories is to look at what's actually horrifying about humanity, instead of shining a flashlight on it and running away giggling.

I try to be as honest as I possibly can about the contradictions within my own heart and thereby get to something 'true' and revealing and important about contemporary American culture and human nature.

The difference between kitties and humans is that we are aware of our mortal condition, and the burden of consciousness is to evoke and embody and explore the coordinates of our condition.

Literature plays a huge role in examining difficult real-life issues.

Human nature is to blame for everything, innit? We're just a disease on this planet.

If I'm watching 'The Real Housewives of Atlanta,' there's a part of that that's just escapism. I'm not watching it with a political lens, but there is a part of me that certain things trigger and pull up, where I'm like, 'Oh, that was really problematic.'

The trouble is, I just don't know if I'm too human or not human enough.

Nothing I do is didactic. I just want to hold up a mirror and say, 'This is who we are.'

Starting with the lyrics, 'Only scared of myself and the truth in the stars/I'm a king, I'm the dirt, God within me shine,' the first half of '6 Weeks' delves into my attempts to balance the notion that I have an existential purpose with the realization that I am nothing against the vastness of the universe.

Like all art, nonfiction film should invite, seduce, or force us to confront the most difficult, frightening or mysterious aspects of what it means to be human.

How am I different than anyone else? I'm a human being, and I have my faults, too.

Some IMDB viewers complain that 'Beloved' should have been reclassifed as Horror... well, so should American history.

If you look at it closely, 'Mankatha' is a politically incorrect film. It explores the darker side of the human mind, and I think, while watching it, people are, in a sense, redeeming themselves of their own guilt.

We humans are still a very primitive culture, and it's one of the traps we've fallen into over the course of our lives - to forget our history. That's why George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' is so profound. It chronicles our short memory.

When horror films are made in times of political strife, I think they're not made with an instinct to add to the chaos but to bring shape to it.

We are all people who have messed up. I fall short every single day.

Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

How do we define, how do we describe, how do we explain and/or understand ourselves? What sort of creatures do we take ourselves to be? What are we? Who are we? Why are we? How do we come to be what or who we are or take ourselves to be? How do we give an account of ourselves? How do we account for ourselves, our actions, interactions, transactions (praxis), our biologic processes? Our specific human existence?