Quotes from John Hughes

I so desperately hate to end these movies that the first thing I do when I'm done is write another one. Then I don't feel sad about having to leave and everybody going away.

It's like being at the kids' table at Thanksgiving - you can put your elbows on it, you don't have to talk politics... no matter how old I get, there's always a part of me that's sitting there.

My early prose style - this is so embarrassing - was sort of a suburban, Presbyterian knockoff of Woody Allen.

I didn't have this tortured childhood; I liked it.

I like young actors because they're so unspoiled, not like some of those actors who are about half an hour into their fifteen minutes of fame by the time they get to me.

I used to judge the quality of music by whether I could make a 90-minute cassette and not repeat any artists.

I happen to go for the simplest, most ordinary things. The extraordinary doesn't interest me. I'm not interested in psychotics. I'm interested in the person you don't expect to have a story. I like Everyman.

When I approach a band, I want to respect them and be respectful of their music. I'm not gonna say, 'Look, you guys are real hot, so we'll stick you in the movie, and we'll get it in all these stores and all these stations.' That isn't right.

To have a song work for the movie, it can't just be written apart and shoved in. It's got to come out of the action. It's got to talk about the characters, not the story: it has to augment that action.

Why watch someone kissing when people really close their eyes when they kiss?

I usually listen to surf music, not much instrumental music, and when I was younger I listened to jazz.

A geek is a guy who has everything going for him but he's just too young. He's got the software but he doesn't have the hardware yet.

When I did 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off', I had the idea on Monday and the following Tuesday it was in budget at Paramount. I couldn't walk.

The best sounds a kid will get is in a movie theater, with huge speakers, turned up loud. I always mix my music really loud. I don't care if you don't hear all the dialogue. The audience are not idiots.

I stumbled into this business, I didn't train for it. I yelled 'Action!' on my first two movies before the camera was turned on.

The outpouring of generosity is overwhelming. People across the Lehigh Valley are moved by the images they are seeing on TV and they want to know how they can help.

I don't think of kids as a lower form of the human species.

A nerd will be a nerd all his life.

I don't think I'm making any great statements, and I certainly don't think I'm making art.

When I go to a concert, I can't believe that people pay lots of money to see a band that they obviously like and then they dance the whole time.

Advertising was fairly simple work, and I really just wanted a job where I could sit and write every day and not get fired for it like I had at other jobs, but it was fun.

My generation had to be taken seriously because we were stopping things and burning things. We were able to initiate change, because we had such vast numbers. We were part of the baby boom, and when we moved, everything moved with us.

I'm from Chicago, I live in Chicago and I wanted very much for the music in Chicago to succeed.

What a director should be doing is making it appear as though there was no script.