Jim Jarmusch famous quotes

I think of poets as outlaw visionaries in a way.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Thinking #Poetry #Visionaries

Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Dream #Book #Inspiration

When I get depressed, or anything, I go 'think of all the music I haven't even heard yet!' So, it's the one thing. Imagine the world without music. Man, just hand me a gun, will you?
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Gun #Men #Thinking

Jim Jarmusch: Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Vision #Way #Language

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Inspiration #Imagination #Fuel

Music, to me, is the most beautiful form, and I love film because film is very related to music. It moves by you in its own rhythm. It's not like reading a book or looking at a painting. It gives you its own time frame, like music, so they are very connected for me. But music to me is the biggest inspiration. When I get depressed, or anything, I go "think of all the music I haven't even heard yet!" So, it's the one thing. Imagine the world without music. Man, just hand me a gun, will you?
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Beautiful #Moving #Book

I prefer to be subcultural rather than mass-cultural. I'm not interested in hitting the vein of the mainstream.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Veins #Hitting #Mainstream

If anyone tells you there is only one way, their way, get as far away from them as possible, both physically and philosophically.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Way #Far Away

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination   Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Inspiration #Imagination #Fuel

It was a really interesting time in New York in the late 70s and early 80s, and the music scene was really, really interesting because you didn't have to be a virtuoso to make music, it was more about your desire to express things.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#New York #Interesting #Desire

Separate two particles, place them at opposite ends of the universe, produce some effect in one, and the other will be identically affected.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Opposites #Two #Ends

Select only things to steal that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Soul #Originality #Speak

Life has no plot, why must films or fiction?
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Plot #Fiction #Film

The beauty of life is in small details, not in big events.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Events #Details #Life Is

I have to tell everyone that when I finish a film and it goes out and is released, I never look at my films again. I don't like looking back. I don't even like talking about 'em! So I'm really digging back in my memory because I don't like to sit and look at my films again.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Memories #Talking #Digging

Music, to me, is the most beautiful form, and I love film because film is very related to music. It moves by you in its own rhythm... Imagine the world without music. Man, just hand me a gun, will you?
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Music #Beautiful #Moving

The beauty of ideas is that they are like waves in the ocean and they connect with things that came before them, and I think it is very important to embrace things that interest you and influence you, and incorporate them into what you do, as all artists have always done. The ones that say they don’t, are lying. Or are afraid that their work won’t be seen as being original, somehow.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Lying #Ocean #Artist

It's hard to get lost if you don't know where you're going.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Lost

A cult classic... both a celebration of the unlimited potential of the comic book form, and a perfect melding of inspiring, iconoclastic imaginations.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Book #Perfect #Imagination

Before she married my father, my mother was a film reviewer for The Akron Beacon Journal - a small newspaper.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Mother #Father #Married

If you go into a bar in most places in America and even say the word poetry, you'll probably get beaten up. But poetry is a really strong, beautiful form to me, and a lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Beautiful #Strong #America

I've always loved films, always. I studied literature and I went to Columbia in New York and I went to Paris for part of one year and ended up staying there.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Stay Strong #New York #Years

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Character #Thinking #Plot

I like to rehearse with the actors scenes that are not in the script and will not be in the film because what we're really doing is trying to establish their character, and good acting to me is about reacting.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Character #Acting #Trying

Stupid ***** white man.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Stupid #Men #White

I'm like a navigator and I try to encourage our collaboration and find the best way that will produce fruit. I like fruit. I like cherries, I like bananas.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Trying #Collaboration #Way

Each one of us is a set of shifting molecules, spinning in ecstasy,
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Molecules #Spinning #Shifting

A lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Innovation #Language

I am interested in the non-dramatic moments in life. I`m not at all attracted to making films that are about drama. A few years back, I saw a biopic about a famous American abstract expressionist artist. And you know what? It really horrified me.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Drama #Artist #Years

When I left Ohio when I was 17 and ended up in New York and realised that not all films had the giant crab monsters in them, it really opened up a lot of things for me.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#New York #Ohio #Monsters

Cricket makes no sense to me. I find it beautiful to watch and I like that they break for tea. That is very cool, but I don't understand. My friends from The Clash tried to explain it years and years ago, but I didn't understand what they were talking about.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Beautiful #Talking #Years

I wanted to make an Indian character who wasn't either a) the savage that must be eliminated, the force of nature that's blocking the way for industrial progress, or b) the noble innocent that knows all and is another cliche. I wanted him to be a complicated human being.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Block #Character #Progress

I love rehearsing because in rehearsals there are no mistakes, nothing is wrong, some things apply or lead you to focus on the character and the things that don't apply are equally valuable because they lead you to towards what does.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Mistake #Character #Focus

I didn't get the degree because in my last year, for my thesis film I made a feature called Permanent Vacation and they'd given me a scholarship, the Louis B Mayer fellowship and they made a mistake.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Mistake #Vacation #Years

I didn't get my degree at NYU; I got it later, they gave me an honourary one.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Graduation #Nyu #Degrees

Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Soul #Speak #Stealing

It's a sad and beautiful world.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Beautiful #World #Beautiful World

I don't like American football. I think it's boring and ridiculous and predictable. But baseball is very beautiful. It's played on a diamond.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Beautiful #Baseball #Football

Baseball is one of the most beautiful games. It is. It is a very Zen-like game.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Beautiful #Baseball #Games

I'd wanted to be a writer and when I came back to New York worked as a musician too, but I found my writing starting to get more and more referential to cinema.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#New York #Writing #Starting Over

A lot of poets too live on the margins of social acceptance, they certainly aren't in it for the money. William Blake - only his first book was legitimately published.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Book #Acceptance #Firsts

Ghost Dog: In the words of the ancients, one should make his decision within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break through to the other side.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Dog #Space #Decision

I always think the Sex Pistols and the Ramones as very, very important because they stripped things down.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Sex #Thinking #Important

I started working with friends of mine and that, to some degree, continues.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Degrees

I start with actors that I know personally or I know their work, and there are things about their work or their presence or their own personality that make a character, that exaggerates some qualities and suppresses other qualities. It's always a real collaboration for me.
-- Jim Jarmusch

#Real #Character #Personality