Quotes from Baz Luhrmann

Look, I had a passion for comic books growing up.

I do find walking is fundamental to my creative process.

I often think to myself, at the end of an interesting life it's maybe not such a bad thing to spend your last days with your friends sitting by the blue, blue ocean reliving the story of your life while sitting in the dangerous sun.

I understand that anything actors are doing, good or bad, is motivated by fear.

I've always loved the old epics that tell a simple emotional story, whether it's the tumultuous relationship between Rhett and Scarlett or Lawrence of Arabia's passion to get lost in a faraway place.

In the '60s not everybody was wearing flowers in their hair and flowing caftans.

I think dance in any culture, in any form, is a true leveler.

Western films don't do very well in India.

I love dancing.

I wouldn't take a directing job if I didn't think it was enriching life.

I feel a kinship with anyone who feels that their road, their life or who they really are is not good enough. I really relate to that.

I mean, '8½' to me is such a great dissertation on the whole, you know, act of filmmaking and creativity.

You really think that on my films people tell me what to do? I don't think so. On my films I decide.

Fitzgerald was a modernist.

Why live life from dream to dream, and dread the day when dreaming ends.

Historically, epics are set in Africa or Asia or the Wild West, but if you make an epic today it's hard to disassociate from the contemporary realities of those places.

If you wanted to show a mirror to people that says, 'You've been drunk on money,' they're not going to want to see it. But if you reflected that mirror on another time they'd be willing to. People will need an explanation of where we are and where we've been, and 'The Great Gatsby' can provide that explanation.

Sydney in general is eclectic. You can be on that brilliant blue ocean walk in the morning and then within 20 minutes you can be in a completely vast suburban sprawl or an Italian or Asian suburb, and it's that mix of people, it's that melting pot of people that give it its vital personality.

Australia, to the rest of the world, is just far away, and Australia in the Thirties was the faraway of the faraway.

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long, and in the end, it's only with yourself

One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I've seen it three times, is Bondarchuk's 'War and Peace.' Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era.

I've always loved the old epics that tell a simple emotional story, whether it's the tumultuous relationship between Rhett and Scarlett or Lawrence of Arabia's passion to get lost in a faraway place.

I feel funny about owning art. I don't really want to say: 'Wow, come and see my Monet - it's in a dark room at the bottom of my cellar.'

My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education - from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic.