Robert Altman famous quotes

03-17-2025

Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.
-- Robert Altman

#Chance #Lifetime #Filmmaking
Words don't tell you what people are thinking. Rarely do we use words to really tell. We use words to sell people or to convince people or to make them admire us. It's all disguise. It's all hidden -- a secret language.
-- Robert Altman

#Thinking #People #Secret
I'll give you the same advice I give my children: Never take advice from anybody.
-- Robert Altman

#Children #Giving #Advice
I am not an expert. That is someone else's job. If I were expert, the approach would be all wrong. It would be from the inside. I am a blunderer. I usually don't know what I am going into at the start. I go into the fog and trust something will be there.
-- Robert Altman

#Jobs #Fog #Experts
Making a movie is like chipping away at a stone. You take a piece off here, you take a piece off there and when you're finished, you have a sculpture. You know that there's something in there, but you're not sure exactly what it is until you find it.
-- Robert Altman

#Sculpture #Pieces #Stones
I never knew what I wanted, except that it was something I hadn't seen before.
-- Robert Altman

#Wanted
All of my films deal with the same thing: striving, socially and culturally, to stay alive.
-- Robert Altman

#Alive #Film #Strive
That wasn't an ending. It was just a stopping point.
-- Robert Altman

#Hollywood #Stopping #Film
I love fishing. You put that line in the water and you don't know what's on the other end. Your imagination is under there.
-- Robert Altman

#Sea #Fishing #Rivers
Your own ego is the only trap that I think you can fall into.
-- Robert Altman

#Fall #Thinking #Ego
What is an ending? There's no such thing. Death is the only ending.
-- Robert Altman
Chance is another name that we give to our mistakes. And all of the best things in my films are mistakes.
-- Robert Altman

#Mistake #Names #Giving
[The Player is] not a truthful indictment of Hollywood. It's much uglier than I portrayed it, but nobody would've been interested if I'd shown just how sadistic, cruel and self-orientated it is.
-- Robert Altman

#Player #Self #Hollywood
I don't think screenplay writing is the same as writing - I mean, I think it's blueprinting.
-- Robert Altman

#Writing #Mean #Thinking
There was not a lot of dialogue. The titles were just to keep you up. It's the visual stimulation that hits the audience. That's the reason for film. Otherwise, we might as well turn the light out and call it radio.
-- Robert Altman

#Light #Radio #Might
If you have a child who is seven feet tall, you don't cut off his head or his legs. You buy him a bigger bed and hope he plays basketball.
-- Robert Altman

#Basketball #Children #Cutting
I have never made a movie that's attracted a 14-year-old boy.
-- Robert Altman

#Boys #Years #Made
The artist and the multitude are natural enemies. They always will be, both ways. The artist is an enemy of the multitude, and the multitude is the enemy of the artist. And when the disguise comes off and they're both standing facing one another, they're just there at odds end.
-- Robert Altman

#Art #Odds #Enemy
Most of my films I call arena films. I deal with a confined area -- an arena -- and I try to cover every aspect of it.
-- Robert Altman

#Trying #Arena #Film
Wisdom and love have nothing to do with each other. Wisdom is staying alive, survival. You're wise if you don't stick your finger in the light plug. Love - you'll stick your finger in anything.
-- Robert Altman

#Wise #Love You #Light
They'll never give me an Oscar. And I sincerely, honestly don't care. I always turn up when I'm nominated and it would be nice to get one, but to win one would be bad luck. It comes with too much expectation. It would be the end.
-- Robert Altman

#Nice #Winning #Expectations
People have asked me throughout the years which directors have influenced me. I don't know their names, because I was mostly influenced when I'd see a film and think, "Man, I want to be sure to never do anything like that." So I never learned their names. It wasn't a matter of copying or emulating somebody I admired. It was getting rid of a lot of stuff.
-- Robert Altman

#Men #Thinking #Years
I insist that they do what they became actors to do. I want them to create something and not just hit marks and say words. So they all love that because they're playing. It's called playacting. Their contributions are not only welcomed, but are accepted and used.
-- Robert Altman

#Actors #Want #Accepted
I was a heavy drinker, but the alcohol affected my heart rather than my liver. So I stopped. I smoke grass now. I say that to everybody, because marijuana should be legalized. It's ridiculous that it isn't. If at the end of the day I feel like smoking a joint I do it. It changes the perception of what I've been through all day.
-- Robert Altman

#Heart #Marijuana #Smoking
Maybe there's a chance to get back to grown-up films. Anything that uses humor and dramatic values to deal with human emotions and gets down to what people are to people.
-- Robert Altman

#People #Use #Emotion

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