Top 60 Ron Howard Quotes

I love leaving the door open to good ideas. I love the collaborative swirl. I get charged by problem-solving, usually under some kind of stress – the sun is going down, and we have eight minutes, and we have to solve it. Great things come out of it.

When ‘Apollo 13’ appeared as an opportunity and I began to tackle that in as authentic a way as I possibly could, I really became enthralled by the philosophical side of space travel and why we need to explore – what it means to us here on Earth – all of those things. I became a huge proponent.

I’m lucky in a lot of ways. And in my family life, my home life, is where I count myself the luckiest.

I have a grandson who’s both really interested in art and all things mechanical, so I think he’ll get a huge kick out of ‘Apollo 13’ someday. And I think my granddaughters will enjoy ‘Splash.’

A long time ago, I stopped trying to look at projects as genre exercises.

I just don’t think of myself as an actor much at all, so I don’t lust after any particular roles.

Early in the second season of ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ I ventured a suggestion for a line change to make it sound more ‘like the way a kid would say it.’ I was just 7 years old. But my idea was accepted, and I remember standing frozen, thrilled at what this moment represented to me.

When you read about it, you realize that mental illness is so prevalent. People didn’t always have the right terms for it, but most families have had a brush with it.

I believe in the imperative to explore, so any project that I can be involved with that celebrates that, and expands people’s imagination around that idea of pushing out, is one of the most positive things that I think I could be involved with.

I never saw The Beatles live. I was very aware of them, though.

I’m not really a sequel guy. I did ‘Angels & Demons’ after ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ because I like working with Hanks, and I felt it was a really different sort of world that we were visiting. That was, of itself, interesting.

I don’t want to only make the movies that studios will greenlight.

The story of John Nash is an amazing, powerful journey. But as unique as this man is, his story is also very accessible because it is so heartbreakingly human.

Whatever your political leaning, vote. This participation is vital. I feel the same way about issues like the space program, education, the military. The more the public focuses on these things, thinks and forms opinions, I think the better we are as a democracy.

I don’t choose something unless I think I have a personal understanding and something I can offer. It’s not always thematic. I wanted to do ‘The Grinch’ because I wanted to direct Jim Carrey creating that kind of comic fantasy character live. I just thought that would be a mind-blowing experience, and it creatively was.

I want every movie to have a big audience. I’m always hopeful that it’s going to be discovered, and audiences are fantastic that way because every once in a while they surprise you. I didn’t think ‘Beautiful Mind’ was going to be that kind of global success.

I don’t look ahead to the future as a vast, endless one. I’ve begun to feel the calendar pages turning.

As a director, I’ve wanted to have adventure in my life, creative adventure. I think it’s partly because I grew up, basically from age six to 26, mostly on television series where the producers find something that works and then do it over and over and over again.

What I love about DVD is that the quality is good.

I used to feel that I had to be dictatorial in order to be respected, but after I did a couple of TV movies, I began to see that authority came with the job. So I began to relax and let more people into the process, and my work really improved.

Nina Gold is a fantastic casting director. She’s doing the new ‘Star Wars’ movies, but she also does ‘Game of Thrones’ and many of the Working Title movies, and she did ‘Rush.’

I developed a theory that, in many ways, the early ‘Andy Griffith’ episodes especially were an awful lot like a Capra movie. They were a lot like ‘Mr. Deeds’ or a lot like ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ in tone and presentation.

Why fight technology at all? The audience is always going to tell you what they like best. And you, as a storyteller, as a communicator, are going to be required to adjust to that.

Sometimes there’s something very comforting about a film unfolding more or less as you expect it to.

Can you imagine the first time they figured out how to mechanically raise somebody up through the stage and make them appear, or drop them down on a rope or a wire? It blew everybody’s minds, I’m sure.

I went with a friend to see Frank Sinatra in Las Vegas, in the last year that he was performing. He wasn’t necessarily on top form, but the way he could connect with an audience and the way he communicated through the lyrics was something I hadn’t ever really seen before.

I’d say that ‘In the Heart of the Sea’ is the most challenging movie I’ve made. It was tough to figure out how to lead this large cast into some very sensitive, intense, emotional scenes.

I think it’s in our nature to try to get beyond that next horizon. I think that when we, as a species, are scratching that itch, we’re actually following an evolutionary compulsion that is wired into us. I think good things come of it.

I think child stars have a leg up, actually, because they have an innate sense of what creative problem solving is all about. But to make a life out of it, you have to be ready to take on project after project. You have to like the action.

I don’t vacation on the water. I’m a pale-skinned redhead; I get sunburned out there. I’m a little frightened of the ocean, in fact. But I just know there’s great drama out there.

One of the big surprises for me about Einstein was… that he wasn’t this big introvert; he was more like a novelist or a painter. It’s amazing how close society came to not benefiting from Albert Einstein’s genius.

If you’re not out there taking some risks, if you’re just coasting along with your wins, then you’re not really trying.

My folks met at the University of Oklahoma, in the theater department in the 1940s. They were married touring the country in ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Snow White.’ My mother was married in Cinderella’s costume; the dwarves were the best men.

Let me be clear: neither I nor ‘Angels & Demons’ are anti-Catholic.

There are creative benefits to getting older.

Don’t make election popularity largely a matter of which candidate hires the most creative and effective propagandists. Insist that it be, instead, a running conversation with the public.

I have the career that I want.

Everything’s always about page-turning, right? What’s next? So, if you create questions for audiences, then they’ll want to know the answer. Or they begin to formulate possible outcomes. That’s the game we play when we’re hearing a story unfold. That’s part of what sucks us into a movie.

Anytime you really take a close look at people who are dealing with the aging process, you’re going to have a complicated reaction to what you’re seeing and feeling. If you’re in the middle of it, those emotions are going to be quadrupled. It’s immediate, it’s relatable, so it’s good human drama.

I like to make all kinds of shows and films, whether it’s fantasy or big-popcorn, big-screen escapism or dramas based on real events.

When you’re young and you’re striving, it’s all uphill, and it’s easier to climb. Then, when you get and look around, you sort of say, ‘Wow, the altitude’s kinda thin up here!’

Imagine if the people who have lived and learned still had the vitality to act upon the hard learned lessons – and not just share in a conversation, but lead.

I don’t believe in perfection, but those acrimony-free gaps during our family holidays can be downright blissful.

I want to work. I’d be unsatisfied if I couldn’t be pursuing this. But I love my family more. This is really life.

I really feel like you shouldn’t make a movie as a kind of exercise. You have to be all the way in.

My wife and I invest very, very conservatively.

Even when you’re 22 and you feel immortal, you know in your heart you’re not.

When people asked me back then what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said a basketball player, and I meant it. But I loved going to the movies.

There are all these great TV series; you can watch all these hours and hours of shows and ideas, but there’s still something great about a movie that unfolds in a couple of hours, and you have the complete experience.

The sooner we become a multi-planet species, the safer the species is, and the stronger the guarantee that we’re going to continue to evolve.

I never wanted to be a brand director. I didn’t want that kind of stamp. I wanted to be more like Pacino or Dustin Hoffman or Meryl Streep or De Niro – you know, a chameleon as a storyteller – because I love all kinds of movies.

I would do a documentary about Jay-Z. Yes, I would.

I do really like serio-comic movies that treat real difficulties in a real way.

When I occasionally indulge in sort of a ‘look back’ at highlights, it’s so interesting – it almost never comes from an image on a set or even the Academy Awards. It’s almost always a family trip or meeting and falling in love with Cheryl.

I’m not a caterer. I just have to stay with my creative convictions. At some point, you have to just get past the special-interest groups and do what you’re there to do, which is make a movie.