Darren Aronofsky Quotes

Filmmaking is a thousand choices a day, and it's important to just let those choices potentially be informed by something deeper.

There are some scenes that work beautifully in a moving, sweeping master, which is how I like to work.

Directing is creating a whole. You're able to combine different elements and create a film that is unique and true to your vision.

The hardest part of directing is the choosing. Unlike an actor who can do a variety of work, it is a year of your life, you can't afford to get it wrong.

You never really know what the director has got in his mind as far as the scene visually and art direction wise, etc. Even if you do, sometimes there's a side of things that don't necessarily gel the way people intend. So there a bit of a mystical entity, film.

The work of a director can be summed up in two very simple words. Why and How.

I really never imagined that I could ever even direct anything, so 'Girls Like Girls' was co-directed.

The director is the ultimate creative arbiter of what's going to happen. And as a director myself, you really appreciate collaborating with people who are trying to help you find what you need and what you want.

I have to go with what the painting says to me. The painting is always informing me. I'm its servant; it's not mine. I'm doing what it wants.

Sometimes, when you're on the streets, certain music inspires you, and then you have a vision. But, at the end of the day, it's a synthesis of visions, so you have to think, as a director, of a scene, or how to deliver a line, or how do this visually.

Eventually, it came to this place like, 'I'd like to direct, but I need to find the story to tell.' 'Man of Tai Chi' became the story to tell.

I think I'm drawn to films more as a director with a directorial mind even as an actor. I make movies to make the films, not to act.

I knew that I'd end up directing because I'm so hands-on with my films.

Making a movie and not directing the little moments is like drinking a soda and leaving the little slurp puddle for someone else.

I don't really understand why everybody doesn't want to direct. It's an absolutely fascinating combination of skills required and puzzles set on every possible level, emotional and practical and technical. It calls upon such a wide variety of skills. I find it completely absorbing.

Every picture has its own demands, and every picture stimulates something within you to tell it a certain way. I don't know what that is; I don't think too much about that.

I think what makes a good actor's director is the same thing that makes a good director. Acting is just one of the trades necessary to make a movie.

I feel like I'm a filmmaker; I don't feel I need to yell action and cut.

You need these experiences. Just know that sometimes, the director has a specific look in mind.

As the director, I try to go in and know as much as I can about the material. I really try to go in and understand what all the characters are about, what the movie's going to look like.

The camera is the slave to the actor.

I don't have a style. I've never thought of myself as a stylist like the visual stylists I admire enormously - Adrian Lyne, Ridley Scott, Alan Parker - in which every shot has a great idea in them.

Going to directing wasn't a reaction away from acting as much as it was a move towards something I always wanted to do. Ever since I was a kid, I was interested in the camera and how it worked and why one director would place it in this part of the room and then another would place it in that part of the room.

You're always just trying to make your film, tell the story you're trying to tell - best you can, you know.

John Boorman was the best director I've ever had.