Todd Solondz Quotes

Everybody in this public arena makes statements and gets interpreted different ways.

Who hears wrong, replies wrong.

How the audience as a collectivity feels about a movie is important.

People say, "Well, you went on television, it enlarged your readership." It did not at all, not at all. I might as well tell you, I lost some readership, because the profound audience felt somehow bothered by my too easy manner.

The fact that there are people who criticize me doesn't mean that people hate me.

It's not what you say, it's what people hear.

When you work with people who misunderstand you, instead of getting transmissions, you get transmutations, and that's much more interesting in the long run.

A work of art is an echo chamber which repeats what people say about it.

My films are misinterpreted all the time. I don't mind that. Everybody's films are misinterpreted. But there's no malice or stupidity in the people that misinterpret them. You know what you do, but someone else sees it, and they want to talk about it or write about it, and so they misinterpret them.

You never know how people are gonna receive you and especially a character that's so close to the fans in type...

Yeah, people seem to really relate to it and feel moved by it. It's been the most positively received of all my movies so far. I don't know why. I like it just as much as I like my others, but people think this one is the best or the most interesting. I'll take it, though. I wouldn't want them to be saying my films are getting worse.

Say a word, say a thousand to me on the telephone and I shall choose the wrong one to cling to as though you had said it after long deliberation when only I provoked it from you, I will cling to it from among a thousand, to be provoked and hurl it back with something I mean no more than you meant that, something for you to cling to and retreat clinging to.

You know people. Most of them don’t hear anything. Those who hear - don’t listen. A few who listen - don’t understand. And those who could understand… they don’t care.

I am not being obtuse. You are being paranoid.

I get letters from people who say, 'What have you got against women?' What could I possibly have against women? I've married three of them.

The noise you hear after people see something you do - whether it's a TV show or a movie - that always makes you see that thing slightly differently. Without question. The ability of a television series to make adjustments is something you've got to take advantage of. And test-screening a movie can be helpful too. But the part that can be dangerous is when you take those notes as gospel, instead of taking them with a grain of salt. The key is to use the response as one of the tools in your box, as opposed to using it to determine what you do.

When something happens, the only thing in your power is your attitude toward it. It is not the things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance. Things and people are not what we wish them to be nor are they what they seem to be. They are what they are.

Haven't you heard the Democrats disparage people who sign up? It's something I've never understood. Okay, you don't like the military, fine and dandy, but why impugn the people that sign up? They're signing up knowing full well they're volunteering. They're offering their lives, potentially. Why impugn 'em? Why go out...? Because it's an opportunity to criticize America; that's why. Because in the Democrat world, nobody would ever join the military. "Good Lord, we'd go to Yale - hell, we'd go to Dartmouth - before we go to the military!

I think I missed all of the wonderful things ... I missed the control that you have in film, and I missed getting it right, really getting it right, the way you hope people will see it. All of the things that people love about theater - the fact that it changes every night and that it's so spontaneous - all of those things just frighten me.

I really get a little bit confused by all this "angry angry angry" talk when all I do is tell jokes and at least some people find it funny.

...we were like two people standing apart on separate mountain peaks, recklessly leaning forward to throw stones at one another, unaware of the dangerous chasm that separated us.

I understand it. People are very willing to say things about me, to make accusations about me that are - I don't get upset about them anymore, but they are very regrettable.

Well I wasn't really attacking the religious beliefs [in the song 'The Vatican Rag'], I was attacking the formality of the rituals of the Catholic church; however, people took it wrongly.

Art comes from everywhere. It's your response to your surroundings.

The American public has difficulty believing ... [that] injustice continues to be inflicted upon Indian people because Americans assume that the sympathy and tolerance they feel toward Indians is somehow 'felt' or transferred to the government policy that deals with Indians. This is not the case.