Top 77 Spike Jonze Quotes

Emotions are messy and hard to figure out.

I would love to make video games.

When you’re close to somebody, you can never really know how they’re experiencing the world.

I met Arcade Fire on their first record, ‘Funeral.’ I loved that record, and it was a record I was listening to while I wrote ‘Where the Wild Things Are.’ Those songs – especially ‘Wake Up’ and ‘Neighbourhood’ – there’s a lot of that record that’s about childhood.

Music is thousands and thousands of years old and I don’t think that basic, primitive connection to the language of music ever changes.

I don’t know what life was like 1,000 years ago, but I imagine there was the same struggle: people trying to connect with each other.

The thing I remember most about having a tantrum is not the rage during the tantrum, but the being freaked out afterwards, and embarrassed, and guilty. It’s scary to lose control of yourself.

I’m not one to intellectualize why I did something.

I’d love to do a musical one day – a theatre musical.

Is an audience open to seeing a film that isn’t what they expect when they see a film that’s been adapted from a children’s book?

I definitely check my phone for texts a lot – like, ‘Did anyone text me? Is anyone thinking about me? Does anyone love me?’

Some of the best ideas come from sheer discovery, and not by some masterminded, preconceived genius.

Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity.

I like the idea of the documentary as a portrait. There’s not a chronological beginning, middle, and end structure. You build something in the editing room that’s shaped by getting to know the person and digging deeper, unpeeling the layers of them as you get to know them.

The Beastie Boys are guys I loved before I met them, and when I got to know them, we started a magazine together, and we started making videos together, and a lot of it came out of us just cracking ourselves up, like going to the fake mustache store and buying fake mustaches.

I don’t understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.

I’m very nervous about taking jobs. I always make sure that, if I’m going to work with somebody, that they really understand what it is that I want to do. I’d rather not take the job than be vague about how I’m going to do something and run into trouble later on. It’s a hard thing to negotiate.

If I heard somebody else say, ‘I worked on a movie for five years’, I’d be like, ‘What? How could it take that long? What were you doing?’

I love when me and my friends don’t know how to make something – there’s that risk of failure, which should be there. If it’s guaranteed not to fail, it’s something you already know how to do.

I’m always inspired by other filmmakers, whether it’s a shot or the way they handle tone.

If you focus your energy on the camera, it takes away from the time you have to focus on the performances.

As a director, you never get to watch other directors work, and you also don’t get to collaborate with other directors that much.

There’s a difference between stress and pressure.

Kids are so fiercely opinionated, that if they love the Harry Potter books and they go see the movie, they’ll be the first to say, ‘That was wrong! They didn’t get that right!’ They’re storytellers themselves. They’re critics. They’re going to have the critical opinion.

After ‘Where The Wild Things Are,’ which was this big, long five-year project, I spent a year making small things.

Nicolas Cage, I would love to work with him again. He’s just a fearless madman. He’ll go anywhere you want to go. He would not say ‘no’ to anything.

It’s fun when you start a movie, because it’s kind of like you get to go Christmas shopping… you get to make your wish list and you start thinking about what each character needs.

I think, as you’re growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you’re an adult. You’re ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don’t feel things more as we get older.

Obviously technology has become such a big presence in our lives and, I definitely know, in my life.

Chris Cooper I got to work with many times.

I feel like you only have so much time to make stuff. I’m definitely aware of that. I’m also excited about it.

There was definitely a point in my thirties when I thought, ‘Oh, wow, I’m not the youngest person on the set anymore.’ But I like it. Working with younger artists is totally exciting.

The world is becoming nicer and easier, but that doesn’t mean we are any less lonely or any more connected.

I think the way kids create is so inspiring. They’re drawing a picture? They love the picture they drew; they’re not tortured about it.

I think if something’s emotionally real – and I’m not even talking about in movies or in art, but in life – you can’t really argue with that, even if your intellectual mind might know differently.

I’m a little slow, so forgive me if I’m inarticulate.

I think there is something about… unless you come from a really evolved family that allowed you to talk about your feelings and felt like a safe environment, then you aren’t really prepared to do that when you grow up.

‘Where The Wild Things Are,’ I think I could have written on my own. When I brought Dave Eggers on, I already had 60 pages of notes. I technically could have, but I don’t think I was ready to. I needed him to be there and help me.

I’m always amazed when any actor can decipher my direction.

I’ve got to say, I’ve probably seen a lot more of the Three Stooges than of the Marx Brothers.

I want to make films without a single clear message, and films that are as close as possible to what it feels like to be alive. At least to me.

Johnny Knoxville went from struggling to pay his rent to being on the cover of ‘Rolling Stone’ in the course of, like, a month.

As a parent, your perspective of childhood is through the eyes of this person that you care so much about and you just want the world to be great for them. You want their life to be easy and happy.

I’ll still make movies for studios, but my editing process will be much further removed from the studio system. Because I don’t understand it. I don’t understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies. So if that’s how they do it, then I don’t think I want to do it.

As creatives, it’s a hard thing to push, to make something you’re truly excited about, especially if you’ve written 100 different concepts and they keep getting shot down.

I think the thing that is meaningful is when I can tell that someone’s been affected by the movie or by anything I made.

I love people that willfully defy what you’re supposed to be and create their own definition of their selves.

I like hiring people based on a feeling – this person gets it – rather than what they’ve done in the past.

When I’m making stuff, the thing that excites me most is not the result, but the process and trying to do something I’ve never done before.

I remember when MySpace came out. It did do something pretty incredible – which was unite people around the world with common interests and common tastes.

I skated and rode bikes on ramps, and my mom was always super supportive. She was one of the only divorced moms in the neighborhood, so all the other parents looked down upon her for letting her kids do that kind of thing.

I think the way Win Butler writes, I really identify with it. He writes very emotionally and very cinematically, and I just connect with his sensibility.

I like Kanye, and I care about him.

The best videos were the ones where I became friends with the artists first.

You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.

If I can make one generalised statement, and generalised statements are never entirely true, nobody wants to be talked down to, kids included.

I think there’s a knee-jerk reaction to things from parents.

I feel like everything I make is personal to me.

I like people that define their own values. I am much more interested in somebody who has their own definition of what they value, their own definition of what success is, their own definition of what love is.

A great poem leaves so much room for everybody to have such a different reaction to it.

Is artificial intelligence less than our intelligence?

I’m not a film-snob.

I started directing videos at the same time that Michel Gondry was starting to direct videos, and I watched what he’d do. They all seemed to be pushing some new visual effects idea, but never just for spectacle. They all captured a feeling.

You make a movie that is about what you want it to be about and let people have their reaction to it.

The market groups and demographics said, ‘Teenage guys don’t read magazines.’

Me and my friends had BMX magazines and skate magazines, and I was a photographer who made skate videos.

There are a lot of kids in the world. People seem to keep having them.

I just want to make whatever is exciting.

I definitely enjoy getting to know people I find inspiring.

On everything I do I’m always taking someone’s money, whether it’s a movie studio or a record label. Somebody’s paying for it, and I’m always respectful of that. But I’m never going to compromise.