Top 33 Samurai Quotes

I was not grown up in the U.S., nor in Japan. In order to create a video game that people around the globe can enjoy and relate to, I can’t draw things deeply rooted in the local culture that I’m not familiar with. That’s why we are not doing games about football or samurai.

I love the way the long scenes feel – one of the characteristics of ’70s filmmaking is that you don’t cut around a lot; you let things play out. I did that on ‘Samurai Jack,’ and it carried over into ‘Clone Wars.’

I’m a huge lover of ‘Seven Samurai’ and anything Kurosawa ever did. The comedic work out of Japan in terms of martial arts movies, some of them are hilarious.

I’ve always been really interested in the age of the samurai in Japan.

Before the war, my parents were very proud people. They’d always talk about Japan and also about the samurai and things like that. Right after Pearl Harbor, they were just real quiet. They kept to themselves; they were afraid to talk about what could happen. I assume they knew that nothing good would come out of it.

I love tattoos. And mine symbolise who I really am. I have a Samurai on my left arm. At a subconscious level, I connect to this warrior and model myself on his discipline, skills and honour. There is also a tribal tattoo and a Chinese symbol of faith. I have seen a lot of people getting tattoos just because it’s a trend.

What do I geek out about? What am I? Hmmm. I love movies. I watch movies. I like big, sweeping epics, like Ed Zwick stuff: ‘The Last Samurai,’ ‘Legends of the Fall,’ ‘Blood Diamond,’ ‘Glory.’

Working on the Samurai sword is very different because your body position has to be very still. It’s a much quieter was of fighting.

One of the amazing things about ‘Seven Samurai’ is that there are a lot of characters. And considering you have so many, and they all have shaved heads, and you’ve got good guys and bad guys and peasants, you get to understand a lot of them without too much being said.

We use music, cinematic storytelling and very stylized backgrounds to create mood and atmosphere as ‘Samurai Jack’ travels an exotic landscape. The environment is a major character in each show.

The new book is a result of my well-documented… absorption in Samurai movie culture. It’s called ‘The 47th Samurai: A Bob Lee Swagger novel,’ and it takes Bob to Japan in search of the sword his father recovered on Iwo that has gone missing under extremely violent circumstances.

Quentin wanted to create this special world in which everybody walks around with a samurai sword, extras in the airport, a special little place in the airplane to stick your samurai sword.

I watch mostly every martial arts movie… I really like movies that aren’t just martial arts. I like movies that have spiritual meaning behind them, like samurai movies, or movies that have meditation.

I don’t believe a champion is the biggest, baddest, meanest dude in the world. I think the champion is like a warrior; it’s like the head knight or lead samurai: humble men of integrity, respect, and honor that treat people kindly.

I got into incense the first time I visited Japan with Simple Minds in the 80s, now I stock up every time I go back. There’s an otherworldliness about these little cedar wood sticks – which Samurai warriors used to cleanse the spirit – that just helps you ‘escape.’

The sword was a very elegant weapon in the days of the samurai. You had honor and chivalry much like the knights, and yet it was a gruesome and horrific weapon.

You re-watch ‘Napoleon Dynamite’, and there’s a lot of thrift shopping that goes on in that movie; there’s a lot of funny stuff. It’s definitely amusing, and paying 99 cents for a samurai sword is amazing.

I’m not a fighter, but in my mind I’m fighting every day. ‘What’s new? What am I doing?’ I’m fighting myself. My soul is samurai. My roots aren’t samurai, but my soul is.

I’ve always wanted to play a samurai warrior.

As a Western, ‘The Magnificent Seven’ was a pretty good film. I don’t think it was as interesting or as multi-faceted as ‘Seven Samurai.’

I do a lot of voice over for Japanese anime titles as well as live-action stuff and original stuff from the States. ‘Legion of Super Heroes,’ ‘New Wolverine: The X – Men’ animated series, ‘Afro Samurai’ and some live-action stuff, TV shows here and there – I like to mix it up.

I’m kind of like a samurai. They say if you want to be a samurai, you can’t be afraid of dying, and as soon as you flinch, you get your head cut off. I’m not afraid of losing this business.

I always had a sense that I would fall in love with Tokyo. In retrospect I guess it’s not that surprising. I was of the generation that had grown up in the ’80s when Japan was ascendant (born aloft by a bubble whose burst crippled its economy for decades), and I’d fed on a steady diet of anime and samurai films.

I always loved samurai movies, and I wanted to incorporate that whole level of elegance and just the code of the samurai to ‘Conan.’

I watching this Disney documentary, and I’m not Disney, but I was thinking about Mickey Mouse and he became an icon. Walt moved onto other things but he made him exist. I was thinking, ‘Wow, is ‘Samurai Jack’ my ‘Mickey Mouse?’ Am I stupid to stop working on it?’

Samurai culture did exist really, for hundreds of years and the notion of people trying to create some sort of a moral code, the idea that there existed certain behaviors that could be celebrated and that could be operative in a life.

Samurai films, like westerns, need not be familiar genre stories. They can expand to contain stories of ethical challenges and human tragedy.

I am a genre lover – everything from spaghetti western to samurai movie.

I’ve only kept one award in my whole life, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Mizuno gave me a samurai sword for winning the Cy Young. It’s awesome.

I remember my roommate was watching ‘Seven Samurai,’ and I just couldn’t fathom why anybody would watch it.

I don’t get over the wonder of it, and ‘The Last Samurai’ was an extreme example of that. Every day when I went to the set, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

The influence of ‘Hidden Fortress’ comes up a lot because it was printed in a book once. The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it’s told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.

I am inspired by both Japanese Samurai films, in particular the films of Kurosawa, and how they share the spirit of American Westerns, with the influences running in both directions, and including the ‘Spaghetti Westerns’ and films of Sam Peckinpah.