Jonathan Nolan famous quotes

You're different. You're more perfect. Time is three things for most people, but for you, for us, just one. A singularity. One moment. This moment. Like you're the center of the clock, the axis on which the hands turn. Time moves about you but never moves you. It has lost its ability to affect you. What is it they say? That time is theft? But not for you. Close your eyes and you can start all over again. Conjure up that necessary emotion, fresh as roses.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Moving #Eye #Axes

We are the only instrument for understanding the universe. We have to ground it in human beings.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Understanding #Instruments #Humans

I don't like to talk about messages so much with films simply because it's a little more didactic. The reason I'm a filmmaker is to tell stories and so you hope that they will have resonance for people and for the kind of things you're talking about.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Talking #People #Stories

I thought it would be an enormous amount of fun to make a movie that heads out into space, which is something that we had never done before.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Fun #Space #Would Be

We're going to leave this planet at some point further than we have, we're going to go beyond the moon, we're going to go to mars. We all kind of know that on some level, I think actually. So there's an inevitability to human evolution, this being the next step.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Moon #Thinking #Next Steps

You get to a certain moment where you realize all those humans who landed on the moon did so in between Chris [Nolan] being born and me being born and no one had gone back since, all these Super-8 films we grew up watching of rocket launches, you get to a certain age and you realize all the speeches about going back, they're speeches, there's no money there, we're not going back.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Moon #Age #Gone

I'm hoping that the suspension of the space program is just that, a suspension, and that it's not the final say in the matter, because I think we need it.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Thinking #Space #Finals

One of my first experiences with the space program was with the memorial that was built for the Challenger. When I was in 7th grade my entire class spent the entire school year preparing to launch a spaceship all together. We all had our different jobs that we had to learn how to do, we learned the math that you needed, we learned the practical skills that you needed, and I thought that was really cool. So I think that if you can take a tragedy and find the gold in it and turn it into something positive, that's great.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Jobs #School #Math

I think that we, as human beings, always need to conquer our fears and reach beyond our grasp and I think it's very important that we don't become complacent or stagnant.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Thinking #Important #Needs

I remember when I was a kid my first real confrontation with space travel was when the Challenger exploded and I remember how traumatic that was for me, because I remember watching that on the news and all the children in our class were watching.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Children #Real #Kids

Mankind's expectations have to be greater than ourselves and that the further out there we go, the more we find out that it's about you and me.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Expectations #Mankind

Even if you're not a parent, you have parents and you've been in those situations where there's a certain kind of goodbye - nothing this extreme exists, but I think that's what everyone holds onto, that common denominator that runs through this that everyone can understand.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Goodbye #Running #Thinking

I was struck by - Einstein's a fascinating figure who didn't have any instruments that he used, he didn't use telescopes, he used his mind to try to understand the universe.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Mind #Trying #Use

It can be easy for an actor to go "Well I really have to do a lot" and then just saying "I don't need to do anything, I'm not bound to do anything".
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Needs #Actors #Just Saying

I was definitely looking for a reason to impose rules in the story during the writing process... a set of reasons that you could graph for why it's not chaos and anarchy - for why it has to be order, and why you need architects and an architectural brain to create the world of the dream for the subject to enter.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Dream #Writing #Order

How can you forgive if you can’t remember to forget?
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Forgiving #Remember #Forget

Time eventually convinces most of us that forgiveness is a virtue. Conveniently, cowardice and forgiveness look identical at a certain distance.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Distance #Looks #Virtue

Believing the lie that time will heal all wounds is just a nice way of saying that time deadens us.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Nice #Lying #Believe

Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment. This moment a million times over. You have to trust me. If this moment is repeated enough, if you keep trying — and you have to keep trying — eventually you will come across the next item on your list.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Over You #Trying #Next

Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Matter #Moments #Absurdity

Here's the truth: People, even regular people, are never just any one person with one set of attributes. It's not that simple. We're all at the mercy of the limbic system, clouds of electricity drifting through the brain.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Simple #Clouds #People

If you're good at something, never do it for free.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Money

We live in a moment in history in which our privacy may not be important.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Important #May #Privacy

For a few minutes of every day, every man becomes a genius. This is the tragedy of life.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Men #Tragedy #Genius

The secret to all drama, film, TV, or books - the thing that people respond to most, and the thing I find myself as a viewer feeling most interested in, is the idea of change.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Change #Drama #Book

Books are a time machine.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Book #Machines #Time Machine

We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars, now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Stars #Sky #Worry

Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Men #Idiot #Gang

Because he's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we'll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he's not our hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Hero #Dark #Knights

Everybody is waiting for the end to come, but what if it already passed us by? What if the final joke of Judgment Day was that it had already come and gone and we were none the wiser? Apocalypse arrives quietly; the chosen are herded off to heaven, and the rest of us, the ones who failed the test, just keep on going, oblivious. Dead already, wandering around long after the gods have stopped keeping score, still optimistic about the future.
-- Jonathan Nolan

#Optimistic #Long #Waiting