Quotes from Bennett Miller

If you track something like a political campaign and parcel out what's being communicated in a literal and narrative sense, and what's being communicated by means of emotional and symbolic language, you might find that it's the latter elements that absolutely dominate and move people. It makes me want to take that language and expose it.

My films are inquiries. I've chopped down all the signposts, I really resist taking moral positions.

The silence of a room when someone enters with a gun is very different from the sound that room makes when empty.

People are attracted to entertainment, for sure, or jokes, excitement and romantically heightened stories that might be false, but are still attractive fantasies.

I have a tremendous amount of patience and tolerance when working with people, but if I ever feel the impulse to inhibit myself from doing one more take, or feel a need to apologize to someone for pushing, I know that that relationship isn't gonna last.

Honestly, my smartest business decision was to never do anything that I didn't love doing.

Kenny Lonergan, as a filmmaker, doesn't tell stories so much as he observes them, which is to say, his films don't come pre-digested. You have to bring your own enzymes. It's a more gripping and challenging experience.

I think Will Ferrell is probably completely evil, the darkest of them all. He is known among comics as the dark knight. An evil, evil man and a dangerous soul.

Kubrick has a divining rod for the concealed, alienating secrets of characters.

My business life is really simple. It's like, get check. Put check in bank. Pay rent. I've never bought a stock in my life. I never got caught up in that trip. And the truth is, I don't obsess about money ever.

It's important for an actor to feel like they're really being watched and to receive feedback and encouragement about the aspects of what they're doing that feels truthful - and also to raise awareness when they might be resorting to habits and tricks, which every actor has.

I think it's fair to ask how truthful a film is as opposed to how factual it is.

It's amazing how much you will forgive if the behavior is truthful.

I think when an actor feels like they're being watched with great sensitivity and a subtle eye and a nose for truthfulness, that has some effect.

My nature is to try and look past apparent truths, to pull back layers and understand the psychological motives behind phenomena.

I like to have something that I can challenge common-sense notions about, challenge the apparent truths, and really look past the many faces of a thing to see what's behind it.

I think I am missing a gene that most people have to enable them to feel happiness about success and these kind of things.

I definitely have moments in my life where I discovered a film, and the language of the film itself spoke to me in a way, as if someone came up to you and started speaking a language you'd never heard but understood and was able to express things the language you knew could not.

Before I find myself in the middle of a project, I want to make sure it is the kind of thing that keeps me excited for two years. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to push the proverbial rock up the proverbial mountain.

I am and always have been fascinated with people, and I have a very good time coming up with the narratives of people's lives, exploring how a person thinks and feels.

I like going into a scene knowing that the script isn't quite finished, that there's something that isn't really going to reveal itself until something spontaneously occurs.

I am a tumbleweed. I don't have a company. I don't have a staff. I don't own anything - I've never owned a car or an apartment.

I hardly read fiction; I mostly read nonfiction. I like to examine material things.

I am nostalgic for those man-behind-the-curtain days when someone could get away with impersonating Kubrick because nobody had any idea what Kubrick looked like.