Samuel Fuller Quotes

I seem to gravitate toward the dark side of things when it comes to directing. I love action, but I love the drama as well.

Going back to the noir fiction of the 30s, 40s and 50s. It's very contemporary.

This is what noir is, what it can be when it stops playing nice--blunt force drama stripped down to the bone, then made to dance across the page.

Yeah, I was always a big fan of noir.

I'd love to star in dark drama that audiences could really relate to.

That's what noir feels like to me. It feels like some kind of recurring dream, with very strong archetypes operating. You know, the guilty girl being pursued, falling, all kinds of stuff that we see in our dreams all the time.

Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

I think a film noir demands a beginning and an end.

As a genre, the noir of post-World War II was based on characters who were weak or repellent, bound to let down us and themselves.

I think really good drama comes down to real human emotion. That's what makes us all tick, and that's what I've always been drawn to when it comes to scripts is real human emotion and dealing with that.

Instead of playing heroes and righteous people, I'd rather portray characters with problems of conscience who have to lie, to betray, and then have to cope with that. They feel more true to me.

I love doing the nighttime soap, the emotional, psychological, hard stuff that I got to tackle on 'Hannibal.'

I think all actors are professional liars.

Noir was a brainchild of the United States. And most of the creators of classic noir - novelists and screenwriters, directors and cameramen - were men. Women were their mysterious, sometimes villainous, always seductive objects of desire.

I don't care if it's a mystery story, a Western, or the story of Julius Caesar. To me it's the emotion, the lies, the double-cross, whether it's Brutus doing it to Caesar or Bob Stack doing it to Robert Ryan that defines what kind of drama it is.

Drama - what literature does at night.

I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar - if he is financially fortunate.

I wouldn't presume to define noir - if we could define it, we wouldn't need to use a French word for it - but it seems to me it's more a way of looking at the world than what one sees.

Film noir has a mood that everyone can feel. It’s people in trouble, at night, with a little bit of wind and the right kind of music. It’s a beautiful thing.

Falsehood is a critical element in fiction. Part of the thrill of being told a story is the chance of being hoodwinked. . .The telling of lies is a sort of sleight of hand that displays our deepest feelings about life.

In the theater lying is looked upon as an occupational disease.

The bottom line of comedy is to be funny, and the bottom line of drama is to be truthful. You can be truthful and funny, but if you're not truthful in a drama than the audience leaves you.

If you've a story, make sure it's a whole one, with details close to hand. It's the difference between a good lie and getting caught.

Everybody always talks about the science fiction genre, in particular, which always makes me think about people in spaceships. I can appreciate that, but that's not really where I think my dramatist aspect lies.

None of us suffers as much as we should, or loves as much as we say. Love is the first lie; wisdom the last.