Quotes

I try to live my life where I end up at a point where I have no regrets. So I try to choose the road that I have the most passion on because then you can never really blame yourself for making the wrong choices. You can always say you're following your passion.

There's always been a lot of pressure and tension on the line. If Pi (1998) didn't work out, I have no idea what my career would be. I don't think I would have gotten another shot at it. If Requiem for a Dream (2000) didn't work out, they would have called me a 'one-hit wonder with a sophomore slump'.

To me, watching a movie is like going to an amusement park. My worst fear is making a film that people don't think is a good ride.

[on casting The Wrestler (2008)] No one believed in Mickey Rourke... He has no value as a commodity. Well, I sat with him and looked into his eyes. His eyes aren't dead. They're alive, yearning, thinking.

[on Mickey Rourke] When you meet him, he has all this armour on him, but that's because inside he's soft as jelly and he has such a big heart. Technically, he's an incredible actor and completely in control of his craft.

I walked out of The Matrix (1999) and I was thinking, 'What kind of science fiction movie can people make now?' The Wachowski Brothers [now sisters Lana Wachowski and Lilly Wachowski] took all the great sci-fi ideas of the 20th century and rolled them into a delicious pop culture sandwich that everyone on the planet devoured.

Filmmaking is barely an art. 99% of my job is bureaucracy.

You have to be memorable if you want people to be thinking about it thirty seconds after it happens. I don't think it matters, the reaction, as long as they're reacting.

It's a very hard line, as a filmmaker, to know when is too much. And I'm usually on the wrong side of it.

I think it's important to keep trying new things.

[on creating Black Swan (2010)] It was a very hard film to make and I ended up making everyone's commitment to stay on it longer and longer. Every time we had a push because the money fell apart, or whatever, the hardest conversation I would have was with Natalie [Natalie Portman] because I knew it meant carrot sticks and almonds for another 3 months for her and she was not going to be happy.

[on how he chooses visual style that suits each story] It's probably because I'm Godless. And so I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking, which is - ultimately what my God becomes, which is what my mantra becomes, is the theme.

All my work comes from somewhere inside. It's passionate. Filming is so tough, people are constantly saying 'no,' you have to wake up every morning. I don't know how to do that unless you believe in the material. [2017]

The dreamscape in movies is one of the great elements of cinema. It was popular all the way up to the 70s, when our heroes Scorsese [Martin Scorsese] and Friedkin [William Friedkin] started making realism, and we've left dreamscape. Bunuel [Luis Buñuel] and Polanski [Roman Polanski] drifted away, and movies became real, leading to '80s fantasy and the '90s superhero era. Now we have very simple heroics. [2017]

If we want something new at the movies, you give them something new and they say, 'What the hell is that?' The more these films can succeed, the more chances we can get weird ones made. [2017]

I told my father "Dad, all I want in my life is for people to either cheer or boo. I just don't want anything in the middle."

I can't spoon-feed. I just don't do that. My job, first and foremost, is to entertain and scare the audience.

I have a real problem with violence and sexuality being used for no reason. Those are very easy tools to rely on and very dangerous to abuse. I try to be truthful to what violence is. There's nothing glamorous about it.