Quotes from John Sayles

But compared to writing a novel, where you can be God, I did the Bay of Pigs invasion in six pages once, and there were 50,000 guys with boots that I didn't have to pay, and all those extras; we didn't have to pay them.

I take more jobs when I need more money, if I'm investing in films. I take fewer when I don't. Or if something really good comes along, I usually find a way to do a good job on it in the time that I've got.

There are genres I don't care for, and I've never worked in those genres, and then sometimes there are people that I haven't liked and I haven't worked for those people. But if I feel like there's a movie that I would like to go see, I'll jump into it.

There were not fifteen people in the story department and twenty-five producers and stuff. And Roger had produced 1,000 movies and directed a couple of hundred, and their comments were always very, very specific.

I don't write [screenplay character] biographies beforehand. I usually go in knowing some sequences: this is where I want to start, this is where I want to end.

Michael Moore, whether you like him or hate him, has done something very important.

To this day, I get rewrite offers where they say: 'We feel this script needs work with character, dialogue, plot and tone,' and when you ask what's left, they say: 'Well, the typing is very good.'

I figured, 'When is that ever going to happen again?'. So I basically set out the opposite way movies are made; I set out with a budget first. I said, 'What can I do well for $40,000?'.

My argument has always been that this is not an anti-Bush film, it's a pro-democracy film. And if George W.Bush comes out on the wrong side of democracy, that's his problem.

I made it about a three-day weekend so people wouldn't have to change their clothes a lot. We didn't have an art department; we didn't have a make-up department.

Sometimes people can't afford to work for you, or they're not interested or available, and you hate to have written the whole movie with somebody in mind and not get them.

I always feel that there are no final victories and no final defeats. But it's true that America is in a hole right now. There are a lot of dead fish in the water.

That is the definition of faith, hermano, says Figueroa. Something that we believe in even though it doesn't work. Eres un cinicio. If it worked, it would be science.

He likes to know things. He checks out book and record collections when he visits people, looks in medicine cabinets, takes inventory in refrigerators. He eaves drops on conversations at public phone booths. He reads murder victims' mail.

You think this man is the enemy? Huh? This is a worker! Any union keeps this man out ain't a union, it's a goddam club! They got you fightin' white against colored, native against foreign, hollow against hollow, when you know there ain't but two sides in this world — them that work and them that don't. You work, they don't. That's all you need to know about the enemy.

The only difference between dancing and fucking, he said in those days, is that you don't fuck in front of a live band.

It's a mixed crowd at the dogs - black, white, hispanic - but to Walt they all look like Jackie Gleason. Heavyset guys with big plans and polyester souls.

There is great literature about imprisonment, . . . about the foot soldier, . . . about the sea -- but not one great work about flying.

What is the point of knowledge if you can't use it to prevail over others?

To survive or to perish in denial, were equal triumphs, were two fronts in a long battle.