Quotes from James Gray

What I do have to get across is the truth of the moment within the given scene. It's my job, as a director and screenwriter, to create the environment in which all those moments will come together eventually.

Sean Penn has announced his retirement from acting about 72 times.

When I was quite young, I dreamed of being a painter.

My wife and I had been to the genetic counselor; my wife is not Jewish - she's the shiksha goddess type - and was negative for everything. But I was positive. I carried the gene for three genetic disorders, which, if she had been positive for, we would have passed down to the child.

The key to humor is often self-loathing or sarcasm. In a sense, that's how self-loathing is made palatable.

If you read about the astronauts who went to the moon - the 12 who walked on it, and the others who orbited - all suffered serious mental trauma of one kind or another.

The first movie, I was 23; I thought I knew everything, but my ego soon took an irrevocable blow.

All I can say is sometimes home gets burned into your occipital lobe, and it can't leave you, and there's always that longing.

I know this sounds phony, but I don't start out on a project going, 'I'm going to make an emotional work,' you know what I mean? You try to tell the story directly and honestly and with passion.

I began to see cinema as the perfect combination of so many wonderful art forms - painting, photography, music, dance, theater.

I suppose I'm always trying to break down the wall between my characters and myself. I'm trying to make the film as expressive and personal as I can, even if I can't explain, for example, how important it is for me to be Jewish.

The idea that the family is this locus of support but can also hold you back and keep you down makes for good drama.

The conventional wisdom is that people come to the United States, and immigration is so great, and they say, 'America, what a great country.' And a lot of that is true.

The closer you can get to being personal, the better the work is, or the more interesting the work is.

Americans have always been excellent at making romantic comedies - but dramatically, we don't really try to do it.

At Ellis Island, I mean, you didn't go there if you arrived in first class. It was only the poorest, the people in the worst shape.

The films I grew up loving, and the art that I love, is not generally the kind of postmodern ironic winking stuff. What lasts is the stuff in which the artists are totally in league with the subject.

I think to be a movie critic is troubling from one major respect. If you are forced to watch ten movies a week, it's really only something you can do for a few years. After a while, it's a bit too much.

Time can be very good or very cruel to films.

The corporate system dictates what gets made, and the movies are so bad because of the economic structure of Hollywood. The big business takeover of Hollywood is at fault rather than American storytellers - it's what keeps textured movies from getting made.

There are very few movies in English about romantic obsession told with a seriousness of purpose.

'Apocalypse Now' does not alienate us or deconstruct itself. In fact, it welcomes us in.

I've learned that you can never predict what will happen to a film. You can never predict if people will love it, if they'll hate it. It's an act of ego if you're hoping for everyone to love the film and tell you how great you are.

It's hard to run away from who you are, and when your taste is formed is a very important thing.