Leigh Whannell Quotes

The acting is something that will always be a part of my life, but the writing gives me a lot more creative freedom. You're a pawn in somebody else's chess game, whereas as a writer and as a director, you get to call the shots. And that's very thrilling.

The best thing about switching from being an actor to being a director is that you don't have to shave or hold your stomach in anymore.

Openness and participation are antidotes to surveillance and control.

I believe in creative control. No matter what anyone makes, they should have control over it.

The writing is really hard. You're alone. It really pulls it out of you. You pull it out of your head. But when you're a director, you're shopping - you're picking this actor, you're picking this scene. It's like the most intense kinetic high-speed shopping of all time. You sit in a chair and it will all come rushing at you like a wind tunnel.

I don't have to act for work anymore; I can act for passion. That's freeing, but it's also a prison of its own. When you can do anything you want, you're really responsible to do something great. And that's scary.

Directing can be very lonely and quite intimidating.

Cities have become places where we are controlled, by CCTV and other means, in the same way as machines are controlled. My works provide an imaginative space in which this can be challenged. It's like opening a window in a closed room.

I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under.

We do so much better when television isn’t watching.

Security is no replacement for liberty.

It may be that by watching everywhere we go, by watching everything we do, by analyzing every word we say, by waiting and passing judgment over every association we make and every person we love, that we could uncover a terrorist plot, or we could discover more criminals. But is that the kind of society we want to live in?

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

We talk about, 'Wow, thank God that we were out when we were, because it was much easier then.' There wasn't paparazzi following you every step of your day, every move you make.

I don't like being watched, and I don't like being told what to do, so acting is a very poor professional choice.

Inside the car is truly my own personal space.

With a label, pressure is added. Being independent, you don't feel a lot of pressure.

I'm going to do everything I'm supposed to do - except roommates. No roommates. I quietly paid for my own room on the road. I didn't want to tell anyone.

Writing a book is incredibly pleasurable, but very solitary. You have total control, but sometimes that can drive you insane.

What I like about being independent [in the music industry] is that anybody who does play the album on the radio and anybody who does choose to write in the media does so because they want to, because they like it or because they find something interesting there, not because they have to.

Freedom was the price of privacy.

I'm not living my life under the spotlight for anybody.

I'm just gonna do a podcast because it's mine, I can control it, I have complete responsibility over it, and no one can touch it.

For me to write I have to be, a, alone, and b, know that nobody is going to question me. I write the way a thief steals; it's a little covert.

I see you watching me like a hawk. I don't mind about the things you talk. But if you touch me something's got to give. I live the life I love and I love the life I live.