Takashi Miike Quotes

When I think about how I want to reach an audience, I just wanted to make pieces that were inspired by something that gave me so much pleasure.

I love making films more than anything, but it's tough.

I try to make films that I find exciting. It makes me want to get out of bed at five in the morning, have my make-up done and play for the rest of the day.

An artist needs to live to create, and to live means to suffer.

I really feel like you shouldn't make a movie as a kind of exercise. You have to be all the way in.

I think suffering has always been an incentive for my creativity.

There's always stress involved in any genre or art form, there's always going to be a struggle. If there's no struggle, you wouldn't do anything. What are you going do? Retire?

We make pictures. At the end of the day, we create something potentially significant that did not exist at the beginning of the day. We go forward, despite the uncertainty. Because this is an act of love and passion, which defies reason and prudence.

Creative work is often driven by pain. It may be that if you don't have something in the back of your head driving you nuts, you may not do anything. It's not a good arrangement. If I were God, I wouldn't have done it that way.

I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.

I try to look at the whole thing and say 'yes' to the projects that I cannot stop thinking about. If I read a script and the subject stays with me - then that's when I want to go to work.

I get a fine warm feeling when I'm doing well, but that pleasure is pretty much negated by the pain of getting started each day. Let's face it, writing is hell.

Sometimes before we make a record I go back and listen to a few. It's equally humbling and uplifting.

I'm producing more, but I think to direct, one has to have a burning desire, and that's not me. I'd rather do something else.

Rational thoughts never drive people's creativity the way emotions do.

I have a desire to create more film, more beauty, more art, more love, but I don't feel desperate. It's not about creating or building a career.

Sometimes my body is aching, but I always think, 'Why am I in this? Why do I love it so much?' That's what makes me persevere, that's what makes me keep on going.

The great composer does not set to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working.

Your work is carved out of agony as a statue is carved out of marble.

You need to suffer to be interesting.

Making a movie is so hard, you'd better make movies about something you really know about. And even more, it's really good to make movies about things you need to figure out for yourself, so you're driven the whole way through. It's going to make things more crucial for you.

The films I want to make, I really want to be passionate about.

I love the passion you go through while you're creating.

Coming to Nashville has been so motivating and inspirational. Just watching people live and breathe their music and create something that they can feel from start to finish.

My favorite on screen moments are when you are really there and you know you're creating something. That's so exciting... it's why you come to work.