Quotes from David Lowery

I love films that are more random and chaotic, finding moments and capturing them.

The image of a bedsheet ghost standing all alone in an empty house was something I was obsessed with. I really wanted to make a film about that image, and I was waiting for the right story to come along. When it did, I did my best to honor that image.

Obviously 'Pete's Dragon' is more commercial than 'A Ghost Story,' but when making them, I'm just trying to tell a story that matters to me, that ultimately would satisfy me as a moviegoer. Because watching movies is my favorite thing to do. I watch a lot of them.

I'm an atheist. I don't believe in the afterlife, but I do believe in ghosts.

If I can't finish a screenplay, if I can't get to the last page as a writer, it probably means it's not a good movie for me to make.

I'm not searching for the meaning of life, but I'm looking for a meaning within my life.

I love what Paul Thomas Anderson did with 'The Master' with putting out those teasers made up of footage that's not in the movie.

I try to live my life with grace and through grace even though I don't particularly believe in the divine - and that's a direct result of my having been raised Catholic.

I take a great deal of value in things that are done by hand or executed by hand.

I find everything in life a little bit sad, but I also find a great deal of hope everywhere I look.

I love communicating non-verbally. I find great value in it.

With the transcendent or supernatural, they help us contextualize our own lives while we are here on this earth. On a narrative level, as a storyteller, they are a wonderful tool and technique by which to explore those hopes, those fears, those existential dilemmas that we all face from time to time.

When I'm writing a story, I try to reduce it to the barest possible components and go from there.

Making movies is hard for me. Being on set is very trying. I'm not good at being that communicative for that long. Editing is where I'm happiest.

I can't watch my movies at their premieres - I learned that lesson the hard way.

We build our legacy piece by piece, and maybe the whole world will remember you or maybe just a couple of people, but you do what you can to make sure you're still around after you're gone.

Time goes by so slowly when you're a child, and then, as an adult, it goes by in the blink of an eye.

I have a repository of titles I like in my head, and I am always looking for a movie that I can put one on.

One of my earliest memories, movie-related or otherwise, is of seeing a man dunking a man's head in a toilet on television, and my mom telling me that this is what would happen to me if I ever joined the Army. It wasn't until my senior year in high school that I would discover that this was a scene from 'The Great Santini,' starring Robert Duvall.

One of my biggest regrets is that I didn't finish college.

I never rejected religion, but it just ceased to be an overriding concern in my life.

The idea that all we have is everything that's come before us, and we are the accumulated weight of our own personal histories, is a beautiful concept. And yet it also leaves you asking, 'Is that all there is? Is that all that defines us? Is that all we have?'

I certainly did not envisage making a Disney movie. The most I hoped for was to be able to pay my bills. I was not a go-getter. I was very type-B.

I love horror films. I love ghost movies and haunted-house movies.