Quotes from Richard Linklater

I did The Newton Boys and during the whole process of making the film, I may have spent a week in Los Angeles.

Everybody just wants to appreciate time as it's passing, to be in the moment. It's the hardest thing to do. You're either in the unknown future that you're working toward, or you're in the past that becomes a little abstract.

One minute you're starting left fielder, hitting home runs; the next, it's career over. I was 20.

Pro athletes, how they go through the world is so elevated. The bubble they're in is one of entitlement. And that starts young. By the time they're in college, they've had it a lot of their life.

Took me a long time to know I was a nobody from nowhere.

Storytelling is powerful; film particularly. We can know a lot of things intellectually, but humans really live on storytelling. Primarily with ourselves; we're all stories of our own narrative.

'The Newton Boys' was the one time I've made a film with really active characters who weren't at all self-reflexive and just plowed through their lives. There's a part of everyone that's like that. We have a biological imperative to keep living, keep moving forward... We have no choice.

I always sensed instinctively from the earliest age that I was being lied to.

In interviews, I never wanted to play into the myth of, 'Yeah, I was sitting there doing nothing, and then made 'Slacker.'' No. I'd been making shorts, a Super-8 feature, and running a film society. I always try to stress to people that there's a lot of work involved and years of preparation. But no one wants to hear that part.

I'm not enough of one of those public personalities who feels as though he's been one-dimensionalized. I don't feel that strongly enough.

The human psyche creates structure. We all go through our lives like, 'Oh! And then I moved here.' We're pattern-seeking, structure-producing machines.

The arts were like, there's no opponent. It's just yourself. I'm not saying they don't make the arts a competition with awards and all that, but that's outside the work itself.

I remember daydreaming out in the outfield: I wish I had more time. I want to read 'The Brothers Karamazov.'

I think there are more films being made, but there are probably less outlets for them and distributors.

It's disappointing to see films become pure entertainment, so that it's not an art form.

When I saw 'subUrbia' on stage, I started having those feelings inside me. I saw it as a film, and I felt I knew the characters, or I was the characters. It really dredged up all this stuff in me that never went away.

I like films that just put you in someone's world. It can be very subversive. Hitchcock would put you in the mind of a psychopath, and you'd care about them.

No one is asking what happened to all the homeless. No one cares, because it's easier to get on the subway and not be accosted.

I always thought that I had a pretty diverse body of work, I mean, as far as subject matter. Teenage rock and roll movie; romance; '20s Western. On paper it looks different, but then there's similarities in the vibe of them.

I always say I'll never make a film in Austin in summer, but I always end up here.

Everyone is encouraged to see their lives, the world through the eyes of the rich.

A lot of Luis Bunuel's later, European films are all great.

The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. Because, if you can do that, you can do anything.

As a little kid, you go where your parents drag you. You have no agency, no dominion.