David O. Russell Quotes

I was really serious about painting, so I could never be a Sunday painter. You can't just switch it on and off.

I'm committed to the purity of my art form.

I'm just kind of really interested in athletes as artists of a pretty serious variety and people who devote themselves to what they do in a really incredible way.

You stand your ground and you perform your art. That's what the artist does. The artist is about perfection.

If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great work - then I was never an artist.

I don't make crappy movies. I spend two or three years making a film. I don't take myself seriously, but I take my movies very seriously.

If I didn't love it, I would not record it.

We never threw a record together. Each record was done really seriously, as if our life depended on it.

My feeling is, I do a lot of low-budget films. I don't do low-budget acting. I have no interest in just goofballing my way through, thinking, 'Ah, no one's ever going to see this anyway.'

We put everything we had into this record, just like we do with every other record that we make.

I am not a Ph.D. in economics or a doctorate in literature that I can afford to take my singing lightly. Even if I sing a jingle, I take it as seriously as oxygen.

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

You can't really go into TV thinking, 'Maybe I can make a few bucks doing this thing I'm only kind of interested in to support my one true love, which is prose fiction.' I think you have to love what you're doing to do it well.

If you think I write stories where it is all right to just be good enough, are you kidding? You think I have a cavalier attitude on throwing stuff out? Are you kidding? I am not cavalier about what I do for a living.

I feel very, very, very intent on only releasing things that I believe are fully worthy.

I am a perfectionist, and my immense respect for my fans and the public meant that the quality of my clothing had to match my performance.

I've worked with a lot of people who have a lot of integrity towards cinema.

Everything I involve myself with is an extension of me, so I take everything super seriously, from the music to the shows. That's the only way to do it.

To me, music is not a stunt. Music is not a joke. I take every lick of music that I've ever played very serious.

It's such a commitment, making a film, you're really dedicated, it's your life, that's all you do for that period of your life.

We all can be masters at our craft, but you have to make sacrifices that come along with making that decision.

[Saniyya Sidney] was very serious about her work and her craft, and she wanted to be good, and she wanted to work on it. So I said, "Ok." It was as simple as that. She was just right. She just has it.

I just try to do the best job that I can, as an actor. Hopefully, that carries through. That's all I can do.

I think I have patient fans that want quality over quantity. It's more important to me that the project be the best that it can be and the realest it can be rather than rushing a whole bunch of generic songs, because I could do that. I could just put together some songs real quick that I really like. I only write and I only sing for a purpose, so if its not then, it's not going to be rushed.

It's probably not an accident that the films that I care about happen to be about issues that matter to me, stories that I want to tell. If you're going to spend two years of your life on something it has to matter to you, you have to be passionate about it.