Baz Luhrmann Quotes:

A life lived in fear is a life half lived.

source: - "Strictly Ballroom". www.imdb.com. 1992.

Topics: Half, Ballroom

My wife is the fact-checker, I'm in the story telling business.

Topics: Wife, Stories, Facts

I feel a kinship with anyone who feels that their road, their life or who they really are is not good enough. I really relate to that.

source: - "In the Director’s Chair: Baz Luhrmann". Interview with Jarett Wieselman, pagesix.com. December 6, 2010.

Topics: Not Good Enough, Feels, Kinship

The ugly duckling is a misunderstood universal myth. It's not about turning into a blonde Barbie doll or becoming what you dream of being; it's about self-revelation, becoming who you are.

Topics: Dream, Ugly Duckling, Self, Ducklings, Becoming Who You Are

Sydney is rather like an arrogant lover. When it rains it can deny you its love and you can find it hard to relate to. It's not a place that's built to be rainy or cold. But when the sun comes out, it bats its eyelids, it's glamorous, beautiful, attractive, smart, and it's very hard to get away from its magnetic pull.

Topics: Beautiful, Travel, Smart, Sydney

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself

source: - Mary Schmich (2012). “The Best of Mary Schmich: Selected Writings by the Chicago Tribune's Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary”, p.32, Agate Digital

Topics: Moving On, Time, Race, Wear Sunscreen, Sunscreen

Fitzgerald coined the phrase the 'Jazz Age,' and now we're living in the Hip-Hop Age.

Topics: Hip Hop, Age, Phrases, Jazz Age

Everything I make starts very personally.

source: - "How we made the epic of Oz". www.theguardian.com. November 2, 2008.

I always have a point of view. It may not be right, but it's my own.

Topics: Views, May, Point Of View

I am always worried when someone says, 'This is perfect.

source: - "Baz Luhrmann's Despair, Drive and Gamble Behind 'Great Gatsby'" by Stephen Galloway, www.hollywoodreporter.com. April 24, 2013.

Topics: Perfect, Worried

I don't have fights with actors. In absolute honesty, I've never fought with any actor ever.

Topics: Honesty, Fighting, Actors

I feel like a member of any group comprised of outsiders.

Topics: Groups, Outsiders, Members

I grew up around jazz. I love jazz.

Topics: Jazz, Grew Up, Grew

I mean the future has become old fashioned.

Topics: Mean, Old Fashioned

I never see things I make in the same way that the audience does. You can never do that.

source: - "EXCLUSIVE: Baz Luhrmann Talks Strictly Ballroom". Interview with B. Alan Orange, movieweb.com. December 03, 2010.

Topics: Doe, Way, Audience

I really believe musical form will go on. There's got to be a way of making musical form in cinema live again.

Topics: Believe, Musical, Cinema

There's a whole system in Hollywood where the director never speaks to the studio, but I like to engage them in a discussion. I listen.

Topics: Directors, Hollywood, Speak

Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don't manage that - but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.

source: - "Portrait of the artist: Baz Luhrmann, director". Interview With Laura Barnett, www.theguardian.com. October 25, 2010.

Topics: Doe, Needs, Cinema, Immediacy

Some of the greatest relationship films of all time, the two stars have hated each other, but mostly you see that chemistry.

Topics: Stars, Two, Chemistry

You really think that on my films people tell me what to do? I don't think so. On my films I decide.

Topics: Thinking, People, Film

The race is long but in the end it is only with YOURSELF...

Topics: Race, Long, Ends, Wear Sunscreen

Hurt him. Hurt him and save him

Topics: Hurt, Advice

If Paris is a city of lights, Sydney is the city of fireworks.

Topics: Travel, Light, Cities

I mean, '8 ½' to me is such a great dissertation on the whole, you know, act of filmmaking and creativity.

Topics: Creativity, Mean, Filmmaking, Dissertation

Australia, to the rest of the world, is just far away, and Australia in the Thirties was the faraway of the faraway.

Topics: Australia, World, Far Away

I do find walking is fundamental to my creative process.

Topics: Creative, Fundamentals, Process

In terms of the mechanics of story, myth is an intriguing one because we didn't make myth up; myth is an imprinture of the human condition.

source: - Interview With Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 7, 2001.

Topics: Stories, Intriguing, Mechanic

The food in Sydney is an Asian Pacific cuisine. It's eclectic but above all it's fresh, inventive and creative and that's what I love about it.

Topics: Creative, Asian, Cuisine, Sydney

The party is a true art form in Sydney and people practise it a great deal. You can really get quite lost in it.

Topics: Art, People, Lost, Sydney, Practise

I feel funny about owning art. I don't really want to say: 'Wow, come and see my Monet - it's in a dark room at the bottom of my cellar.'

Topics: Art, Dark, Want, Monet, Folk Art

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.

source: - Song: Everybody's Free

Topics: Advice, Patient, Birth, Wear Sunscreen, Sunscreen

So, what is creative freedom? We can make what we want, how we want. The only constraint is: not for any budget.

Topics: Creative, Want, Constraints, Creative Freedom

At a very young age I was allowed to go into the cinema and watch adult films.

Topics: Age, Adults, Watches

All good, clean stories are melodrama; it's just the set of devices that determines how you show or hide it.

source: - Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 7, 2001.

Topics: Stories, Shows, Devices, Melodrama

Why live life from dream to dream? And dread the day when dreaming ends.

Topics: Dream, Live Life, Ends, Rouge

Trust yourself that you can do it and get it

Topics: Trust Yourself, You Can Do It

When I was growing up you would see big American films that really mythologised their landscape, that really showed the vastness and the drama of their country.

Topics: Country, Growing Up, Drama, American Film

In the '80s, everyone wanted to be in opera. It was groovy.

Topics: Opera, Groovy, Wanted

Ultimately, you have to pursue your own path, not someone's idea of the right path. You need to stay on your path.

source: - "EXCLUSIVE: Baz Luhrmann Talks Strictly Ballroom". Interview with B. Alan Orange, movieweb.com. December 03, 2010.

Topics: Ideas, Needs, Path, Right Path

When you're in theater or the circus or film - to me it's all one - affairs happen. People fall in love.

Topics: Falling In Love, People, Circus

My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education - from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic.

Topics: Father, Dancing, Magic, Commandos, Ballroom

Western films don't do very well in India.

Topics: India, Film, Wells, Western Films

I've always loved the old epics that tell a simple emotional story, whether it's the tumultuous relationship between Rhett and Scarlett or Lawrence of Arabia's passion to get lost in a faraway place.

source: - "How we made the epic of Oz". www.theguardian.com. November 2, 2008.

Topics: Passion, Epic, Simple, Faraway Places, Lawrence Of Arabia

One of the great things about Sydney is that it has a great acceptance of everyone and everything. It's an incredibly tolerant city, a city with a huge multicultural basis.

Topics: Acceptance, Cities, Multicultural, Sydney

In the '60s not everybody was wearing flowers in their hair and flowing caftans.

Topics: Flower, Hair

One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I've seen it three times, is Bondarchuk's 'War and Peace.' Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era.

Topics: War, People, Three

I wouldn't take a directing job if I didn't think it was enriching life.

source: - "Baz Luhrmann (II)". Interview with Geoff Andrew, www.theguardian.com. September 7, 2001.

Topics: Jobs, Thinking, Enriching

I understand that anything actors are doing, good or bad, is motivated by fear.

Topics: Actors, Doing Good, Motivated

I think dance in any culture, in any form, is a true leveler.

Topics: Thinking, Culture, Form

Look, I had a passion for comic books growing up.

Topics: Growing Up, Book, Passion

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth.

source: - Song: Everybody's Free

Topics: Youth, Enjoy

Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's.

source: - Song: Everybody's Free

Topics: Choices, Half, Chance

Advice is a form of nostalgia.

source: - Song: Everybody's Free

Topics: Advice, Nostalgia, Form

Don't worry about the future.

source: - Song: Everybody's Free

Topics: Worry

Accept certain inalienable truths.

source: - Song: Everybody's Free

Topics: Accepting, Certain

It's pretty hard to get mugged in Manhattan.

source: - Source: classic.esquire.com

Topics: Manhattan, Hard

Having grown up far, far away in a small country town in Australia, I was only slightly aware of hip-hop.

source: - Source: www.gq.com

Topics: Country, Australia, Hip Hop, Small Countries

In 1977, hip-hop literally wasn't outside the boroughs. But I was profoundly aware of the city through films like Saturday Night Fever, The French Connection, and Network. I had a friend who visited New York, and I asked him what it was like. He said, "Oh, it's great. Just wear a coat and don't look anyone in the eye."

source: - Source: classic.esquire.com

Topics: New York, Eye, Night, Saturday Night Fever

To be honest, there is a tourists' trail; my family had a farm and a gas station, and you can go and see my birthplace, though where I lived is actually under a freeway now.

source: - Source: classic.esquire.com

Topics: Tourists, Gas Stations, Honest, Birthplace, Freeways

In this country, particularly, actually in times that are difficult, or from corners of America where you least expect it, unbelievable pure creativity has welled up. Generally because of the cross-fertilization... a Scott Joplin tune becomes jazz, becomes blues, and becomes rock 'n' roll.

source: - "Baz Luhrmann examines early hip-hop in Netflix series". Interview with John Carucci, apnews.com. July 29, 2016.

Topics: Country, Creativity, Rocks, Fertilization

Sydney in general is eclectic. You can be on that brilliant blue ocean walk in the morning and then within 20 minutes you can be in a completely vast suburban sprawl or an Italian or Asian suburb, and it's that mix of people, it's that melting pot of people that give it its vital personality.

source: - The Scene Interview, www.cnn.com. January 5, 2007.

Topics: Morning, Ocean, Italian, Eclectic Style, Sydney

The cold-audition process is not a science, so I ignore that.

source: - Source: www.gq.com

Topics: Auditions, Cold, Process