Thom Browne Quotes

It is very easy to make clear what you want a film to say, but I did not wish to engage in overt propaganda, even for the right cause. I wanted to create an experience through the films, something where people could have the freedom of their own response to them.

All I've ever wanted to do is entertain people - make them laugh, think, smile, feel creeped out or scared; whatever it is. I'm getting the opportunity to do that in various roles.

I don't think that architecture is only about shelter, is only about a very simple enclosure. It should be able to excite you, to calm you, to make you think.

The message of great art is to disturb.

It's one of the functions of the theater to shock and titillate and appall, apart from entertain and delight.

Art is meant to disturb.

Movies should make people uncomfortable sometimes.

If you look at most mainstream filmmaking, to be honest, some of these films aren't even asking questions anymore at all.

I decided to make one of the most controversial songs that I could. I want to get under people's skin.

A film is not a vehicle to accuse, or to relay a specific message. If we reduce a film to this, we lose all hope for cinema to ignite a richer conversation.

As an artist, I want a reaction.

So at a time in which the media give the public everything it wants and desires, maybe art should adopt a much more aggressive attitude towards the public. I myself am very much inclined to take this position.

The worst thing you can do to a filmmaker is to walk out of his film and go, 'That was a nice movie.' But if you can cause people to walk out and then argue about the film on the sidewalk... I think we're all seeking dissension, and we love to affect an audience.

I think the last thing you want to do as a writer, as a storyteller, is to create indifference. I don't necessarily go out of my way to provoke, but I would much rather have a song that triggers a whole myriad of reactions than a song that inspires a shrug of the shoulder.

I think the point of art is to be controversial in a lot of ways. It's to cause conversations, and it's to get people excited about and talking about the things that the films are about.

And as a writer, one of the things that I've always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that's what we're supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

I think the audience know which films are aimed at their pocket, and which films are aimed at their soul. There are a lot of films out there made by people who are genuinely trying to make a change.

I am very conscious of the viewer because that's where the art takes place. My work really strives to put the viewer in a certain kind of emotional state.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I think viewers are hungry for shows in which people say something meaningful.

I never deliberately set out to shock, but when people don't walk out of my plays I think there is something wrong.

Every artist in the world likes his or her work to make people think.

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you.

When theater becomes a soothing middle-class thing, when it's packaged as the Night Out, then that's the death of it.

I want art to make me think. In order to do that, it may piss me off, or make me uncomfortable. That promotes awareness and change, or at least some discussion.

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