John Cassavetes Quotes

My mother and father were never frightened of anything. They always felt that they should go through life happily and without fear, and they did that. And it was a great boon to my brother and myself.

- John Cassavetes

I'm a great believer in spontaneity because I think planning is the most destructive thing in the world.

- John Cassavetes

The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we must dare to fail. You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all.

- John Cassavetes

By the age of 50, I would like to know that I'm not dead - that there's some continuity to my life.

- John Cassavetes

You know as a director what you want, but the film is smarter than you, the film says no, the film says there's something more here.

- John Cassavetes

I won't call my work entertainment. It's exploring. It's asking questions of people, constantly. 'How much do you feel? How much do you know? Are you aware of this? Can you cope with this?' A good movie will ask you questions you don't already know the answers to. Why would I want to make a film about something I already understand?

- John Cassavetes

I think people are very stiff. Money makes people stiff, and we want it, and we have to pay the penalty. I never agreed with stiffness. I think people have an understanding of what their life is. I define success by being a realist and not humiliating people. I'm a revolutionary - but not in the political sense.

- John Cassavetes

Commercial movies have no feeling, no sensitivity. Most people tell me people won't understand films with feeling. But everyone can feel.

- John Cassavetes

I think I probably have the philosophy of a poor man. You know, like maybe I'd steal the pennies off a dead man's eyes.

- John Cassavetes

I won't make shorthand films, because I don't want to manipulate audiences into assuming quick, manufactured truths.

- John Cassavetes

Everyone who makes a film is at the major distributors' mercy.

- John Cassavetes

'Faces' became more than a film. It became a way of life, a film against the authorities and the powers that prevent people from expressing themselves the way they want to, something that can't be done in America, that can't be done without money.

- John Cassavetes

You can fail in films because you don't have the talent, or you have too much humility, or you lack ferociousness. I'm a gangster. If I want something, I'll grab it.

- John Cassavetes

The camera is the slave to the actor.

- John Cassavetes

You can defeat fear through humor, through pain, through honesty, bravery, intuition, and through love in the truest sense.

- John Cassavetes

We have problems, terrible problems, but our problems are human problems.

- John Cassavetes

There is no reason why a serious film, one about life, can't be enjoyable, maybe even fun. Emotions can be very entertaining, you know. I try to use them generously in my films.

- John Cassavetes

As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we must dare to fail.

- John Cassavetes

I would put my pictures up against anybody's in this world. Certainly in my own day I bow to no one. I don't think there's another director in the world who works harder to make better films than I do.

- John Cassavetes

The idea of love as a mysterious, undiscovered world has come to have no place in our innermost imagination.

- John Cassavetes

You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all.

- John Cassavetes

I think I'm probably one of the worst directors around, but I do have an interest in my fellow man.

- John Cassavetes

My parents allowed their two sons to be individuals. My family was a wild and wonderful place, with lots of friends and neighbors visiting and talking loud and eating loud and nobody telling the children to be quiet or putting them down.

- John Cassavetes

I don't care about being on top, about being No. 1. I just make movies for a few suckers in the audience, anyway.

- John Cassavetes

I have a one-track mind. That's all that I'm interested in - love. And the lack of it. When it stops.

- John Cassavetes

People have said that my films are very difficult to watch, that they're experiences you are put through rather than ones you enjoy, and it's true.

- John Cassavetes

I hate entertainment.

- John Cassavetes

People don't know what they are doing most of the time. They don't know what they want. It's only in 'the movies' that they know what their problems are and have game plans to deal with them.

- John Cassavetes

No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive.

- John Cassavetes