Quotes from Pedro Almodovar

If I had not been successful as a director, then I'm sure I would still be telling stories. I would have continued on 16mm or found a different medium through which to tell them.

Hospitals are places that you have to stay in for a long time, even if you are a visitor. Time doesn't seem to pass in the same way in hospitals as it does in other places. Time seems to almost not exist in the same way as it does in other places.

The life I live due to my work is difficult to share.

After the enormous success of All About my Mother, all the awards and everything, I wanted to start a movie in exactly the same place that I used to be before. I wanted to show that all of the success had not changed my perception.

My directors of photography light my films, but the colours of the sets, furnishings, clothes, hairstyles - that's me. Everything that's in front of the camera, I bring you.

If I make a movie in English, the money will come from Europe, so that I can keep my independence and freedom. The way they produce in Hollywood doesn't fit me.

Even though I love my mother, I didn't want to make an idealized portrait of her. I'm fascinated more by her defects - they are funnier than her other qualities.

My mother was an extremely creative woman, despite the fact that she lived the life of a rural housewife.

I think that there is always a part of utopia in any romantic relationship.

I think decor says a lot about someone's social position, their taste, their sensibility, their work - and also about the aesthetic way I have chosen to tell their story.

Cinema has become my life. I dont mean a parallel world, I mean my life itself. I sometimes have the impression that the daily reality is simply there to provide material for my next film.

I think that the consciousness of passion makes you act very differently.

Cukor is one of my favorite directors. He was a master at directing women.

Of course I want my films to look really good, but every single element is chosen for a reason. It's telling something in the story.

The silent film has a lot of meanings. The first part of the film is comic. It represents the burlesque feel of those silent films. But I think that the second part of the film is full of tenderness and emotion.

I also wanted to express the strength of cinema to hide reality, while being entertaining. Cinema can fill in the empty spaces of your life and your loneliness.

You can make a thousand different movies about the same subject.

When I make a film, the mixing process is very long, and you hear and watch the material in every form, so that totally shreds your ability to perceive it. So after the mixing, there's no way I can have the emotions or the reactions to my films in the same way.

In fact, it was the women in our house who were in the saddle. If men are the gods, women are not only the presidents but all the ministers of the government.

Whenever I arrive on a real location, I have to move around and work out what the best angles are going to be. When I was moving around with the lens, I discovered things that the naked eye would not have.

Whenever I arrive on a real location, I have to move around and work out what the best angles are going to be.

La Mancha is a very macho, chauvinistic society. I saw very clearly that my life had to be in Madrid, and I liberated myself from my mum and dad after high school.

A dead love never dies.

I don't want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. And in that representation, you use the colors you feel, and sometimes they are fake colors. But always it's to show one emotion.