David Fincher Quotes

The opinion of the public is sacred. The director is a cook who merely offers different dishes to them and has no right to insist they react in a particular way. A film is just a projection of light, completed only when it crosses the gaze of the audience[...]

I don't read the reviews, the blogs, or anything else. Instead, I feel the audience when I show the film.

We have gotten some terrible reviews at times but if we depended on the judgment of the studios or critics, we never would have made more than one movie.

The picture has made its million back in four months; I have been overwhelmed by letters, hundreds of them, literally, begging me in my next production not to swing over the shallow trash of mother love, father love, sister love, brother love.

I used to obsess on critical reactions to my films, and it's really not a healthy way to live your life, so my new take on it is simply, 'I hope people like it!' I'm not going to be looking at the tomato meter for at least a year! I was very lucky on '50/50' that most critics really liked it.

But, I love making independent films. I love it! You create a family, and you sweat, you bleed, you cry, you shout, you laugh and you hug. It's such an extraordinary experience, making independent films.

I don't care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

The one thing I'm proud of as a filmmaker is that people are entitled not to like my films - that's the privilege of the public - but I think I have my own imprint.

I want people to come see my films and enjoy them, but at the end of the day you can't control what people think.

Every time you do something, people are going to like it, people are going to hate it. You tend to make the movies on the basis you are making them for the people who are going to like them and not worrying too much about people who don't like them.

I like the idea that my audience doesn't see what I do as controversial.

I am so anti-people's opinions when I'm making a record, but when it's finished and I put it out there, I hope somebody likes it.

We are not trying to entertain the critics. I'll take my chances with the public.

Everything an artist does is scary, but we do it anyway. If someone tries to steer you off-course, push them outta the way and get back on course. Never giving up - that's what I truly believe all the greatest bands have done.

Making a movie is such a huge commitment of emotion and time that I didn't want to be beholden to doing it for money.

It's always nice to have people love the things that you do. But it's a lot of hard work, and people are always passionate, if it's family fare or a drama, it's the same amount of work and people invest everything into that, and when it doesn't come out the way you want it to, of course it's hurtful.

I think subjectivity plays into everything. It's unavoidable; you couldn't avoid it if you tried. I think, potentially, a lot more commercial movies, it seems to be that the people making the films are trying to elicit the same reaction. I think a lot of the most interesting work in art and in films are often kind of polarized opinions and affect people in very different ways, which may be less successful commercially, but they elicit a dialogue that's quite interesting.

I hope a kid listens to my stuff, I hope there's a change made and at least somebody walks away with: "I'm doing this because I like it." People are going to hate it and that's okay, but I have to do it because my happiness is important too, it's worth it.

It's nice to be in a movie that hasn't been absolutely slaughtered by the press.

I have a life and do a lot of things, and so far my work has been my life. If I was a painter no one would question me about my age. I'm an artist, I hate saying that.

I thought for a long time that within art, that you would come up with an idea, you would labor over it intensely until you felt like it was done, and then when you finished it, that was the final stage. I started to realize that that's not actually the completion of it. The final stage of any kind of art is to really lose control over it and let it affect other people. You can't control the effect that it has on people, but you hope that it has some sort of reaction. You just hope that they're not indifferent to it, you wanna make people feel something, whether it's love or hate.

Sometimes the critics will like a film, and the public doesn't come. Sometimes the critics won't like the film, and the public will come. It's completely spontaneous. It's a hazard.

I would say that among my many huge emotional miscalculations was my taking a film career for granted. It is the most awesome privilege to be able to use one's imagination and wit, physicality and musicality, conscious brain and unconscious instinct in the service of a work that has a chance to move and excite and amuse and delight people all over the world, including long after we're dead. What a noble calling! And I felt it was just there for me as a kind of given, some sort of inherited birthright-when in reality it's the most magnificent luxury.

If you start acting and you start thinking about and worrying about what other people are going to say about it, you'll never really fully commit to who it is and what it is that you're playing.

I found it was my good fortune to somehow be able to work in these forms that I loved when I was a kid. I love movies and I could write screenplays. I love theater and I could write plays. I mean, they would be my own, I could never write what was used to be called the well-made play. But my first play, "Little Murders," turned out to be a great success and a great influence on plays at that time.