Spike Jonze Quotes

I don't tend to work directly from life, except in trying to mimic or match the outlines of its insanity. In other words, when I live through something, I just try to say to myself, "OK, remember this - life is really this crazy or scary or beautiful or surprising - so try to 'get at' that in your stories.

It's funny, I'm very analytical in my real life, but in terms of my films, I try to not analyze them at all and let things just go into them and let them be what they are. I mean, people ask me to this day what 'The Squid and the Whale' stood for, and I have no idea except that it's an exhibit in the Natural History Museum.

I've had great experiences or joyful experiences making a movie that people found very disturbing.

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

My purpose is to make films that will help people to live, even if they sometimes cause unhappiness.

All good art, to me, is uncertainty.

I just make films that attract me.

Literally, FX is like, 'How can we foster your vision?' My vision is pretty much taking pictures of the way I see my life.

I've been searching for a genre that would be most adequate to my vision of the world to convey how my ear hears and my eyes see life. I tried this and that, and finally, I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves. But I don't just record a dry history of events and facts; I'm writing a history of human feelings.

I'm deeply appreciative that many people have enjoyed my films, films that I made in my own style. The successes have helped me learn how to make films free of expectations and focus solely on the pure filmmaking aspect, without worrying about how much money it'll make.

I need my 'art work' or 'entertainment work' or whatever to have empathy for or connection to the way I experience the world as a person.

What makes art powerful is a flash of recognition, a frightening encounter with something familiar about the human condition.

I really want to make something that makes people think. I love that movie 'Tiny Furniture' that Lena Dunham made. I just love that movie, and I laugh at that movie a lot, but I also felt a lot too. I'm just inspired by people like that.

Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts - only in the truth.

You hear it said time and time again by successful directors: You have to make a movie for yourself. Don't make it for anyone else. My style of filmmaking happens to be give the audience what they know they don't want, but they want. Ultimately I have to write and direct in a way that let's just say, you don't want to regret making a choice.

Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made - I try to act in the gap.

I paint my own reality.

The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

As a director, you try to do things that are going to touch the human experience somehow, and emotions that mean something to people. You search for those projects and you hope to realize the potential in a project.

Just trying to live our lives and figuring out how to turn that into art. It's tough to say that the art was premeditated. Instead you just focused on living. 'How do I want to live? What do I want to do?' Then you figured out how to make that into art.

Reason exercises merely the function of preserving order, is, so to say, the police in the region of art. In life it is mostly a cold arithmetician summing up our follies.

It's really interesting to observe each filmmaker's approach to filmmaking and I feel very fortunate to have worked with a lot of really interesting filmmakers and they all approach their job in unique ways.

I think one of the luxuries of being a filmmaker is that you can ask questions but not necessarily have to answer them. Certainly, if I was a politician I'd need to come up with some answers.

It is not logical for art to be logical. Art goes against the grain of the times as readily as it goes with it and at the very same moment. Instead of seeking the nearest exit, art responds to a new situation by uncovering a labyrinth of problems.

Where does beauty begin? Where does it end? Where it ends is where the artist begins.