Quentin Tarantino Quotes

Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody's ear getting cut off; David Lynch is interested in the ear.

‎That's when you know you've found somebody really special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably share silence.

If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.

Bill: Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit - that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent. He's weak... he's unsure of himself... he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race.

Don't you hate that? Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it's necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable? That's when you know you've found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.

As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are.

I'm an American, our names don't mean shit.

I was kind of excited to go to jail for the first time and I learnt some great dialogue.

Gentlemen you had my curiosity ... but now you have my attention.

Ezekiel 25:17. "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you." I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, it meant your ass. I never really questioned what it meant. I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. Now I'm thinkin': it could mean you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. .45 here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could be you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin, Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd. he became the shepherd instead of the vengeance. Jules Winnfield- Samuel L. Jackson

Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that - but you are the only you. Tarantino - you can criticize everything that Quentin does - but nobody writes Tarantino stuff like Tarantino. He is the best Tarantino writer there is, and that was actually the thing that people responded to - they’re going ‘this is an individual writing with his own point of view’. There are better writers than me out there, there are smarter writers, there are people who can plot better - there are all those kinds of things, but there’s nobody who can write a Neil Gaiman story like I can.

Something stopped me in school a little bit. Anything that I'm not interested in, I can't even feign interest.

Carlos: So, what, were they psychos, or... Seth: Did they look like psychos? Is that what they looked like? They were vampires. Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are!

You don't have to know how to make a movie. If you truly love cinema with all your heart and with enough passion, you can't help but make a good movie.

It's 4:40am and i'm standing in the middle of a Quentin Tarantino version of Finding Nemo

Do i look like a beautiful blond with big tits and an ass that tastes like French vanilla ice-cream? No. no, you don't. Then why are you telling me all this bullshit just so you can fuck me.

Hamburgers! The corner-stone of any nutritious breakfast.

In a way, what Tarantino has done with the French New Wave and with David Lynch is what Pat Boone did with rhythm and blues: He's found (ingeniously) a way to take what is ragged and distinctive and menacing about their work and homogenize it, churn it until it's smooth and cool and hygienic enough for mass consumption. Reservoir Dogs, for example, with its comically banal lunch chatter, creepily otiose code names, and intrusive soundtrack of campy pop from decades past, is a Lynch movie made commercial, i.e., fast, linear, and with what was idiosyncratically surreal now made fashionably (i.e., "hiply") surreal [...] D. Lynch is an exponentially better filmmaker than Q. Tarantino. For, unlike Tarantino, D. Lynch knows that an act of violence in an American film has, through repetition and desensitization, lost the ability to refer to anything but itself. A better way to put what I just tried to say: Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody's ear getting cut off; David Lynch is interested in the ear.

Superman didn’t become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he’s Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He’s weak... he’s unsure of himself... he’s a coward. Clark Kent is Superman’s critique on the whole human race.

Tyson kept dancing to his own internal music, flinging out his arms and spinning like a three-hundred-pound, heavily tattooed Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music remake Quentin Tarantino always wanted to do. (I convinced him it was a bad idea. You can thank me later.)

He musta thought it was white boy day. It ain't white boy day, is it?

For those regarded as warriors... When engaged in combat, the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior’s only concern. Suppress all human emotion and compassion. Kill whoever stands in thy way, even if that be Lord God or Buddha himself. This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat.

Foreign films, Cliff thought, were more like novels. They didn't care if you liked the main character or not. And Cliff found that intriguing.

You guys like to tell jokes and giggle and kid around, huh? Giggling like a bunch of young broads in a school yard. Well, let me tell you a joke: Five guys sitting in a bull pen, San Quentin. Wondering how the fuck they got there. What'd we do wrong? What should we've done? What didn't we do? It's your fault, my fault, his fault. All that bullshit. Finally, someone comes up with the idea, wait a minute, while we were planning this caper, all we did was sit around and tell fucking jokes. Got the message?

Jules Winnfield: "ENGLISH, MOTHER FUCKER! DO YOU SPEAK IT!?" Samuel L. Jackson

CHAPTER 2: INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS ALDO THE APACHE My name is Lt. Aldo Raine and I'm putting together a special team, and I need me 8 soldiers. 8 Jewish-American soldiers. Now, y'all might've heard rumors about the armada happening soon. Well, we'll be leaving a little earlier. We're gonna be dropped into France, dressed as civilians. And once we're in enemy territory, as a bushwhackin' guerrilla army, we're gonna be doin' one thing and one thing only... killin' Nazis. Now, I don't know about y'all, but I sure as hell didn't come down from the goddamn Smoky Mountains, cross 5,000 miles of water, fight my way through half of Sicily and jump out of a fuckin' air-o-plane to teach the Nazis lessons in humanity. Nazi ain't got no humanity. They're the foot soldiers of a Jew-hatin', mass murderin' maniac and they need to be destroyed. That's why any and every every son of a bitch we find wearin' a Nazi uniform, they're gonna die. Now, I'm the direct descendant of the mountain man Jim Bridger. That means I got a little Injun in me. And our battle plan will be that of an Apache resistance. We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. And they will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us. And the German won't not be able to help themselves but to imagine the cruelty their brothers endured at our hands, and our boot heels, and the edge of our knives. And the German will be sickened by us, and the German will talk about us, and the German will fear us. And when the German closes their eyes at night and they're tortured by their subconscious for the evil they have done, it will be with thoughts of us they are tortured with. Sooounds good?

I mean, Tarantino is such a SHMUCK 90 percent of the time. But ten percent of the time, I've seen genius shining off the guy.

Life is a bleeding, screaming, violently jerking pig in your arms. And death is you holding a bunch of heavy unmoving meat.

Quentin Tarantino is interested in watching somebody’s ear getting cut off; David Lynch is interested in the ear.

So, if you're reading this cinema book, hopefully to learn a little something about cinema, and your head is swimming from all the names you don't recognize, congratulations, you're learning something

Say 'auf wiedersehen' to your nazi balls.

When a man of principle battles a scoundrel, the scoundrel always at first has the upper hand. Because there are some things the man of principle won’t do.

Keepin' you at a disadvantage, is a advantage I intend to keep.

No, he wants to help me get into Italian movies.” Quick comeback from Cliff: “Then what’s the problem?” Rick screams, “I gotta do fuckin’ Italian movies, that’s the goddamn fuckin’ problem!

Cliff never wondered what Americans would do if the Russians, or the Nazis, or the Japanese, or the Mexicans, or the Vikings, or Alexander the Great ever occupied America by force. He knew what Americans would do. They’d shit their pants and call the fucking cops.

Now, many directors could and would say, So what? It’s just a movie. You don’t have to believe in giant monkeys to direct King Kong.

Also, it’s a little odd to assume all your patrons are thieves.

But now comes the cold-war resentment. Sharon has such a sunny presence that whenever she blocks out the sun, the effect is chilling.

A dog’s got personality. Personality goes a long way.

When it comes to some of them mean bastards out there, it's the only thing does the job. You really only need to hang mean bastards. But mean bastards, you need to hang.

I’ve never considered myself a writer writing stuff to sell, but as a director who writes stuff for himself to direct.

To me, torture would be watching sports on television.

Continued remarks about John and Lisa being like Clarence and Alabama in True Romance or Mickey and Mallory in Natural Born Killers had lifted the atmosphere somewhat.

cachet

Who wants to spend three months making a fucked-up version of their movie?

the soles of her huge bare feet,

I rented a dark little bar on Sunset Boulevard that had pool tables, three bars inside and out, and a movie theater where we played only Quentin Tarantino movies all night.

I’m okay now, just embarrassed. Sorry about this humiliating display.” “Display?” Marvin snorts. “What are you talking about? We’re human people; human people cry. It’s a good thing.

for example, the wealthy planter Quentin Tarantino portrays in Django Unchained is prepared to sell beautiful Broomhilda for only $700 but wants $12,000 for his best fighting slaves.

Ninety-seven percent of everybody you’ve ever met in your life, and ninety-seven percent of everybody you’ll ever meet in your life, have spent ninety-seven percent of their lives running away from fear.

Oh, and Miss Himmelsteen, short of my wife and kids dead on the highway, hold all my calls. In fact, if my wife and kids are dead, well, they’ll all be just as dead thirty minutes from now, so hold all my calls.

It reminds me what Uma Thurman once said about actors improvising: "What most actors call improvising is just stammering and swearing. But another word for improvising is writing. And that's not what you pay actors to do.

Ezekiel 25:17 - "The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.

The key difference between a geek and a critic is that a critic digs deep and tries to get behind the surface of things, for better or worse, while a geek is interested in his own hedonism, the thrill of discovery.A geek is expansive and associative and doesn’t necessarily care what a film or a scene ‘means’. It’s the difference between the encyclopaedia and the scholar. A critic likes an interesting association, a nice phrase; the geek admires the beau geste, a pulpy story and its codes of honour taken seriously. Tarantino rather combines those two roles. He is encyclopaedic but also interpretive. He is a human Rolodex of credits. His films are like stuffed overnight bags breaking at the seams. The Handel of filmmakers, he takes the whole of cinema as his resource. But he also provides new meanings, new interpretations of old moments by the way he recontextualizes them.

And right from the get-go when George Segal puts on a gorilla suit and Ruth Gordon punches him in the nuts, this movie had me. At that age, the height of comedy was a guy in a gorilla suit, and the only thing funnier than that was a guy getting punched in the nuts. So a guy in a gorilla suit getting punched in the nuts was the absolute pinnacle of comedy.

To one degree or another I've spent my entire life since both attending movies and making them, trying to re-create the experience of watching a brand-new Jim Brown Film..

lugubrious,

ephemera

When Cliff saw Belmondo in Breathless, he thought, That guy looks like a fucking monkey. But a monkey I like.

Cliff putting out fires for Rick has been an essential part of their dynamic since the two became a team.

The directions say to add milk and butter, but Cliff thinks if you can afford to add milk and butter you can afford to eat something else.

Can Miss Himmelsteen get you a tasty beverage?

You might not want to do it, but you can do it. In fact, a case could be made, if you can’t do it, you don’t deserve to eat pork.

La Strada, Yojimbo, Ikiru, The Bridge, Rififi, Bicycle Thieves, Rocco and His Brothers, Open City, Seven Samurai, Le Doulos, Bitter Rice (which Cliff thought was sexy as hell).

Referring to the time Invasion of the Body Snatchers producer Walter Wanger shot Jennings Lang in the groin for fucking his wife, Joan Bennett,

The Ox-Bow Incident, Body and Soul, White Heat, The Third Man, The Brothers Rico, Riot in Cell Block 11

You want me to look like some goddamn hippie? Rick thinks. “You want me to look like a goddamn hippie?” Rick questions with a skeptical face.

You don’t need proof when you have instinct.

When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, ‘no, I went to films’.

The same light SHINES from the case. Pumpkin’s expression goes to amazement. Honey Bunny across the room, can’t see shit

He’s reading it pretty good, but he’s still reading it from the page, and every once in a while he stumbles over his words.

haunches.

vacillated

artifice

anachronistic.

pragmatic

unabated

ensconced

righteous indignation.

I don't know how he died, where he died, or where he's buried. But I do know I should've thanked him.

But I want you to tell me what it is you think I do.” “Well,” Rick says, “the way it was explained to me is you put famous American talent in foreign films.” “Not bad,” Marvin says.

Коли принципова людина вступає в конфронтацію з негідником, то негідник спочатку завжди бере гору. Тому що є речі, яких принципова людина не зробить, — тоді як негідник готовий на все. I так триває доти, доки тиск на принципову людину не калічить ïï натури. Бiльшiсть грецьких трагедій, половина британських вистав і три чверті американського кіно базуються на цьому.

Cliff didn’t know enough to write critical pieces for Films in Review, but he knew enough to know Hiroshima Mon Amour was a piece of crap. He knew enough to know Antonioni was a fraud.

Do you like this cigarette case?” “It’s very nice.” “It’s a gift. From Joseph Cotten. One of my most cherished clients.” Rick gives Marvin the impressed expression the agent is demanding.

Besides, even if you went all the way, what would you be? Feather-weight champion of the world. Who gives a shit? I doubt you can even get a credit card based on that. -- Marsellus Wallace

There are very few perfect movies. This is okay, since in the pursuit of cinematic art, perfection shouldn't be the goal. Nevertheless, when it's accomplished (even by accident), it's an achievement.

So, if you're reading this cinema book, hopefully to learn a little something about cinema, and your head is swimming from all the names you don't recognize, congratulations, you're learning something.

Like the atomic bomb, it’s there; like the bomb, the temptation will always exist to use it.There can no longer be a world without the atomic bomb; there can no longer be a world without violent movies.

Rick, who was in his floaty chair in the swimming pool at the time of the attack, was almost shot by the hippie girl with the pistol. He later told authorities, “That goddamn hippie almost blew my fuckin’ head off!

Okay, Marvin thinks, that’s the second time Rick has put down his Tanner co-star Michael Callan. That’s not a good sign. It suggests stinginess in spirit. It suggests a blamer. But Marvin keeps these thoughts to himself.

Well thank you, Trudi,” Now falsely modest again. “But I Don’t think I won the scene.” “Well, of course, you did,” dismissing his protest. “You had all the dialogue but,” she warns him. “In our big scene tomorrow, that’s another story. So watch out.

And for the first time in years, Rick realizes how fortunate he is and was. All the wonderful actors he's worked with through the years—Meeker, Bronson, Coburn, Morrow, McGavin, Robert Blake, Glenn Ford, Edward G. Robinson. All the different actresses he got to kiss. All the affairs he had. All the interesting people he got to work with. All the places he got to visit. All the fun stories he got to live. All the times he saw his name and picture in the papers and magazines. All the nice hotel rooms. All the fuss people made over him. All the fan mail he never read. All the times driving through Hollywood as a citizen in good standing. He looks around at the fabulous house he owns. Paid for by doing what he used to do for free when he was a little boy: pretending to be a cowboy.

White men's stories continue to be considered Important and Universal. If the films of Quentin Tarantino, Stanley Kubrick, or Christopher Nolan don't "speak" to you, you are considered by other filmmakers and creatives to be a philistine of the highest order, one who is simply too ignorant to grasp the depth of their genius. But men can hardly be expected to sit through the films of those female filmmakers most radically plumbing the depths of the female experience—Karyn Kusama, Jane Campion, Tamara Jenkins. After all, they are telling "small" and "personal" stories.

If you're a film fan, collecting video is sort of like marijuana. Laser discs, they're definitely cocaine. Film prints are heroin, all right? You're shooting smack when you start collecting film prints. So, I kinda got into it in a big way, and I've got a pretty nice collection I'm real proud of.

I still should want to watch the movie and enjoy it. Certain actors can play grotesque bad guys, yet they still have a connection to the audience. We still enjoy them as performers. They do cruel deeds, they're monsters, but we enjoy their monsters because when they're on screen we known something exciting will happen.

Paradoxically, that large screen in the cavernous, crowded room creates intimacy. And violence is an intimate act. If you are punching someone, or if you are pinpointing someone in the telescope of your rifle, you are as close to your victim as to a lover, trying to think like them, anticipate their moves, overcome them.

But that, little lady, is why they call him "The Hangman". When the handbill says DEAD OR ALIVE, the rest of us shoot ya' in the back from up on top of a perch somewhere, bring ya' in dead over a saddle. But when John Ruth The Hangman catches ya', you don't die by a bullet in the back. When the Hangman catches you... you hang.

The Kids at the ranch weren’t hip to exactly how much Charlie wanted to be a rock star. How much he wanted fame, money, and recognition. Because to them, Charlie preached against those base desires. They thought Charlie was on a spiritual path to enlightenment. They thought Charlie’s true desire was to pass on that enlightenment. They thought Charlie’s goal was to create a new world order guided by that enlightenment and love for all Mankind. They believed Charlie had a higher purpose, because he told them he did, and they believed him. It never would occur to them that he’d ditch all that horseshit in a minute to put on revolutionary war outfit and trade places with Mark Lindsay.

No te engañes: eso que llamas "la experiencia humana" es sólo una masacre de capas de cebolla. Digo masacre por decir cualquier cosa, una metáfora genérica intercambiable. Aunque, si te lo piensas, nada sabe tanto a sangre como una cebolla descuajaringada, cortada en rodajas contra el vidrio de la mesa y reventada a golpes de mango de cuchillo y tallada en cuadrícula con profundos cortes. Tiene que ser por el olor. [...] Así que sí: no te engañes, eso que llamas "la experiencia humana" es sólo una masacre de capas de cebolla. Uno lo nota siempre, pero más cuando se trata de contar una historia. Lo primero que hacemos es elegir la capa más perfecta y transparente y menos rota de la cebolla que nos ha tocado en suerte.

What’s the secret?” Cliff asked. “Simple,” said the maq. “Fuck ’em good. Fuck ’em real good. And fuck ’em real good real often.” Cliff smiled, but the French fella assured him, “Hey, that’s harder than it sounds. You can’t fuck ’em like you fuck your girlfriend. You can’t fuck ’em like you fuck your best friend’s girlfriend. You can’t fuck ’em like you fuck your father’s mistress. That’s fucking for fun. This is work. For work, they fuck customers for money. For work, you fuck them for money. And trust me, they’re harder to please. If you want to keep ’em in line, you better fuck ’em good, and you better fuck ’em a lot. Which means you’re gonna hafta fuck ’em when you don’t wanna fuck ’em. But even when you don’t wanna fuck ’em, you hafta fuck ’em, and you hafta fuck ’em good. And the more bitches you have, the more fuckin’ you’re gonna do. More bitches means more fuckin’. ...