Quotes from David Fincher

It's a bad day when you don't get the work done that you need to get done or you don't get it done to the satisfaction.

I think intelligence is totally subjective it's like sexiness.

For a number of years, I'd been around the kind of people who financed movies and the kind of people who are there to make the deals for movies. But I'd always had this naive idea that everybody wants to make movies as good as they can be, which is stupid.

I don't know how to depict intelligence.

For a romantic comedy to be three hours long, that's longer than most marriages.

If you think that you can hide what your interests are, what your prurient interests are, what your noble interests are, what your fascinations are, if you think you can hide that in your work as a film director, you're nuts.

People are perverts...that's pretty much been the basis of my career anyway.

Filmmaking isn't if you can just strap on a camera onto an actor, and steadicam, and point it at their face, and follow them through the movie, that is not what moviemaking is, that is not what it's about. It's not just about getting a performance. It's also about the psychology of the cinematic moment, and the psychology of the presentation of that, of that window.

I want people to surprise themselves. Instead of saying "Oh, god, didn't we already do this 17 times?"

There are some movies I can watch over and over, never get sick of. I'll put one of those on and be puttering around the house. Then a certain scene will come on and I'll just have to go over and watch.

When I'm watching somebody act, it's a behavior editorial function - I look at someone act, and I might say, 'I don't believe him when he says that.' I don't know why I don't believe him, probably because the people that I've met, they don't act like that when they say stuff like that and mean it.

You know, I don't think I've ever listened to someone's commentary. Ever.

I think intelligence is totally subjective; it's like sexiness.

I do agree you can't just make movies three hours long for no apparent reason. For a romantic comedy to be three hours long, that's longer than most marriages.

When you make the kind of movies I make, you get weird letters from people.

We were working with this lousy print and it just wasn't going to be good enough. I said that we should get the original negative and do it from that. Well, a couple guys pointed out that the negative was locked up over at Deluxe.

Perfume is pretty good because nobody has to hold the product by their face or use it.

I've never been to Harvard, I've never been to college, so I don't know what dorm life is like.

My idea of professionalism is probably a lot of people's idea of obsessive.

In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behaviour and we sculpt light.

Some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything's okay. I don't make those kinds of movies.

I don't think that digital technology will ever take away the humanity of storytelling, because storytelling is entirely, in and of itself, a wholly human concern.

In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behavior and we sculpt light.

Human beings are amazing at finding ways to waste their own time.