David O. Russell famous quotes

That's the most beautiful thing that I like about boxing: you can take a punch. The biggest thing about taking a punch is your ego reacts and there's no better spiritual lesson than trying to not pay attention to your ego's reaction.
-- David O. Russell

#Beautiful #Sports #Spiritual

Just work on your craft hard - that's your only hope of doing anything worthwhile.
-- David O. Russell

#Crafts #Worthwhile

The closer you stay to emotional authenticity and people, character authenticity, the less you can go wrong. That's how I feel now, no matter what you're doing.
-- David O. Russell

#Character #Emotional #People

You should always make it like it's your last film. That's my personal belief. Every filmmaker is going to have another belief. That's the only way I know to try to make a film that might be good. You got to take it real seriously like it's your last thing.
-- David O. Russell

#Real #Trying #Might

Anything you could ever want or be you already have and are.
-- David O. Russell

#Want

As people, my parents,were very colorful, very talkative, passionate, they really loved each other. But that also meant heated, it meant there was a lot of drama in the house. Which is good for a filmmaker, I think.
-- David O. Russell

#Drama #Thinking #People

There's nothing better than an actor who is really, really hungry to show everything they've got.
-- David O. Russell

#Actors #Hungry #Shows

I think it [films] was my passion without it being declared like a job that I could have, or a career that I could have.
-- David O. Russell

#Jobs #Passion #Thinking

I was frustrated because I couldn't get going, as I was trying to figure out how to make films. I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films.
-- David O. Russell

#Jobs #Class #Office

The gift of life is the gift to suffer sometimes and to embrace it, heartbreak and all.
-- David O. Russell

#Suffering #Sometimes #Life Is

I got put on jury duty, which is where I learned how to write.
-- David O. Russell

#Writing #Duty #Jury Duty

The holy trifecta of directing and filmmaking is character emotion, camera movement and music. When you hit those three, that's magical. That's what I'm trying to do.
-- David O. Russell

#Character #Trying #Cameras

I make every movie and every scene like it could be my last. That's the only way I know how to make cinema that stands on its feet. I have to treat it like that. It has to be life and death stakes.
-- David O. Russell

#Feet #Life And Death #Cinema

What we assert, very often can become our reality. To some degree, everybody can try to shape and control their fate. Everybody picks an identity.
-- David O. Russell

#Fate #Reality #Trying

The romance is essential. I love the love. I don't love just people struggling. I love what people are struggling for. That moves me. I love watching people be loving, and I find it enchanting, magical and transporting. It's one of the reasons that I go to the movies, and that's why I like putting it in movies.
-- David O. Russell

#Struggle #Moving #People

That's just how I see things. I think things that are the most dramatic or tragic can also look the most ridiculous and funny. That's part of being human.
-- David O. Russell

#Thinking #Looks #Ridiculous

There's always hope. Never give up. Walk slowly and drink lots of water. It ain't a sprint.
-- David O. Russell

#Giving Up #Water #Drink

You learn by trying and failing. Just a lot of hard work and mistakes.
-- David O. Russell

#Mistake #Hard Work #Trying

The great lesson about filmmaking is never take "no" for an answer, especially if you have a lot of passion and inspiration to do something.
-- David O. Russell

#Inspiration #Passion #Answers

The cinema that I make is a cinema about people, emotion, humanity and passion. It's not just about what they struggle through, but what they live for. That's what I love. The music they love, the people they love, the clothing, the hair and the life that they love
-- David O. Russell

#Struggle #Passion #Hair

You can't force a movie to happen. Movies happen when they're supposed to happen. Everything happens in God's time. I really believe that.
-- David O. Russell

#Believe #Force #Things Happen

Life just happens the way it's supposed to happen. It delivers you to where it delivers you.
-- David O. Russell

#Way

I would say that when I came into this chapter of my filmmaking career, starting with 'The Fighter,' there was this sense that you have to go from your instincts and you have to go from your gut, and you have to not hesitate and you have to not hedge.
-- David O. Russell

#Careers #Fighter #Instinct

I'm always looking for a way to surprise audiences. That's, I feel, my job as a director. I felt that Amy Adams playing a tough woman in 'The Fighter' was a surprise. People saw her as a princess.
-- David O. Russell

#Jobs #Princess #People

One of the things I've discovered at my age is I must have enchantment. And that was not clear to me in my earlier years. When I look at my favorite films, the Frank Capra - even Scorsese, even 'Goodfellas,' what makes that movie so remarkable is there's enchantment in their world.
-- David O. Russell

#Years #Age #Enchantment

Some of Jimmy Stewart's performance in 'It's A Wonderful Life' is some of the most disturbing performance he ever did, when he falls apart and when he breaks down.
-- David O. Russell

#Fall #Life Is #Wonderful

I think any spiritual experience that's worthwhile is not about ego and it will humble you in some way. And also, a Zen monk once said to me, 'If you're not laughing, then you're not getting it.'
-- David O. Russell

#Spiritual #Humble #Journey

The whole trick is to make it feel like you're spying on real people's lives as they get through the day. When I'm writing, I have to trick myself as a writer. If I consciously say, 'I'm writing,' I feel all this pressure and somehow it doesn't feel as real as when it doesn't seem to count as much.
-- David O. Russell

#Real #Writing #People

What do we have in life, really? If we're lucky we get to a certain age, and we have each other. We have the food we like. We have our crazy little rituals. And we have each other.
-- David O. Russell

#Crazy #Age #Lucky

When I write an email where I outlined a whole scene, it just came out of my unconscious, it comes from a deeper place. The same thing happens when the actors go, take after take, and just get lost in it. When you're in a house, you don't think about being in the house; you're just there.
-- David O. Russell

#Writing #Thinking #House

I think I land somewhere between Scorsese and Capra in what I'm drawn to emotionally; I'm drawn to very intense emotion. Capra freaked people out when they saw Jimmy Stewart lose it in 'It's a Wonderful Life.
-- David O. Russell

#Thinking #Land #People

I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films. I got grants from NYSCA and NEA for an idea, which later became 'Huckabees,' about a guy in a Chinese restaurant who had microphones on every table and heard every personal conversation and would write perversely personal fortunes.
-- David O. Russell

#Jobs #Writing #Class

I did a dance sequence in my second short film, which was my best short film, called 'Hairway to the Stars,' and I think Chris Wink, the founder of Blue Man Group, was in that. It's a black-and-white dance sequence. We were Glorious Food waiters together.
-- David O. Russell

#Stars #Black And White #Men

The Fighter was about a family struggling to overcome and fighting each other sometimes, and I went back and rewrote this script which I had written for my son initially because my son has mood disorder.
-- David O. Russell

#Struggle #Fighting #Son

I feel profoundly blessed. I feel it's a great privilege to make any motion picture.
-- David O. Russell

#Blessed #Privilege #Motion Pictures

That's what takes people out of the fight half the time. They get hit and half the reaction is your ego is saying, 'I cannot believe that person just lit me up - how humiliating.
-- David O. Russell

#Believe #Fighting #People

I think what makes compelling fiction or cinema is when you're basically taking the most intense moments of experience and you're creating a song or a narrative out of it.
-- David O. Russell

#Song #Thinking #Creating

I got a nomination for director, which means the world to me; it's just the most exciting thing for me and my family. You do the good hard work, and the rest of it is something you shouldn't get too caught up in, but when it happens - boy! I respect it.
-- David O. Russell

#Hard Work #Mean #Boys

I just love real characters; they're not pretentious, and every emotion is on the surface, they're regular working people. Their likes, their dislikes, their loves, their hates, their passions; they're all right there on the surface.
-- David O. Russell

#Hate #Real #Passion

You know, veterans come home and they may not be bipolar, but after they've been through a war with PTSD or a head injury, their families have a handful when they come home.
-- David O. Russell

#War #Home #Bipolar