Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu Quotations

When we are looking for validation, that will never satisfy us. When we are looking for affection, for love, a little bit of that will be enough to be complete.

For me, the most important thing that I have to accomplish is to be a good father. That's the most difficult challenge of my life. That's the most important thing for me, more than films.

I have a lot of what you might call creative self-loathing - I have pretty high expectations, and they seem to consistently be higher than what I'm able to accomplish.

To question your own process is a necessity. If you don't question yourself, it's impossible to improve.

In a world where irony reigns, where you have to separate, protect and laugh at anything that is honest or has an emotional charge, I bet for catharsis. I like to invest emotionally in things. And catharsis, when it touches the emotional vein, can open the doors of even those who protect themselves.

Life and death are illusions. We are in a constant state of transformation.

The cavemen, when they saw the antelopes, they had to scratch them on to the caves because they needed to express the immediacy of what they were being affected by - and I love that. That is why I do what I do. I need to express myself.

When you have something that is bothering you, and then you articulate, take the time to really express it and see it clearly, to recognize. To acknowledge that is already a liberating energy.

Cinema is universal, beyond flags and borders and passports.

Actors are exposed in a way that nobody else can understand. They are subject to the likes and dislikes of people their entire life, no matter how successful they are. At the same time, in order to be liked, you have to not be yourself. So it's a very complicated human exercise - an alchemy that I have never understood.

When you have a fresh point of view that comes from the right side of the heart, it's just so valuable. You can take it or not take it, but just that perspective can give you a lot of strength or make you reflect on a lot of things.

I'm less interested in reality. I'm more interested in perception, the truth of the universe that we see.

Movies become art after editing. Instead of just reproducing reality, they juxtapose images of it. That implies expression; that's art.

When you see things upside down, the ego can be extraordinarily funny; it's absurd. But it's tragic at the same time.

I learned there are ways to approach life. You can never change the events, but you can change the way you approach them.

I think we are defined as human beings through our families, no matter what kind of family - through our relationships with parents, brothers and sisters.

To make a film is easy; to make a good film is war. To make a very good film is a miracle.

Two words guided the making of 'Babel' for me: 'dignity' and 'compassion.' These things are normally forgotten in the making of a lot of films. Normally there is not dignity because the poor and dispossessed in a place like Morocco are portrayed as mere victims, or the Japanese are portrayed as cartoon figures with no humanity.

I think there's nothing wrong with being fixated on superheroes when you are 7 years old, but I think there's a disease in not growing up.

I don't have a career. I have a life.

You have kids studying master class visual arts who are pushed to make films that will be successful economically; that's what they focus on. So they work for corporate interest instead of artistic expression.

We have these ambitions that are very hard to accomplish because life puts us in our place. We have this battle with mediocrity.

It's not anthrax or terrorism or AIDS that is the worst ill in our world: The most horrible disease in the world is hate.

Antonio Sanchez is from Mexico City. I met him at a Pat Metheny concert. He did a solo, and I thought, 'This is an octopus man!'

It's harder to make real audio than special effects audio.

Everybody is looking for validation, no matter who you are, and I think that's a need of the human condition - to look for affection or recognition or validation.

All of us want something in life, all of us have flaws, and all of us have strengths. So, I always try to discover those things in a character and then try to expose it in one way or another.

'Amores Perros' is three stories that interconnect in one moment, which is the car accident.

I think I want to talk about life from the point of view of death.

My mom had very low expectations for me, and she really had a point. I was a big problem at seventeen. If I had a kid like me, I would have those same expectations.

I'm neurotic. I complain all the time. I'm a workaholic. And I'm never satisfied.

Fear of the unknown is a great creative partner.

Too much knowledge and analysis can be paralysis.

As a city, it is always compelling. But every day in Mexico City, I give thanks that I am alive.

'Birdman' came from a very beautiful side of me, from a part of honesty and surrender about things.

Freedom comes with a lot of responsibility. When you are by yourself, you have to develop a third eye.

From the time we open our eyes, we live in a Steadicam form, and the only editing is when we talk about our lives or remember things.

I define myself from a vision, from a point of view of life.

I didn't have a normal academic career. I never studied cinema. I learned from life.

I have always said that innocence is much more powerful than experience.

If you stretch tragedy, it will always become comedy.

Movies started out as an extension of a magic trick, so making a spectacle is part of the game.

The creative process is mysterious; a conversation, a ride in the car, or a melody can trigger something.

The way films establish the order of scenes is very artificial.

Writing is not an unknown territory for me.

You have to make millions on Friday night, because there are another 600 films waiting behind you, with explosions and everything.

I began to learn about the camera and the actors. That gave me a lot of the skills. At the same time, advertising gives you a lot of vices, for example, an obsession for a superficial look, but at the same time, it gives you the capacity to synthesize the story - tell a story in one minute.

I have a notebook, and I know what decisions will be made in pre-production. Everything is pre-determined in the pre-production period. I visually design the whole thing, and I know when things will happen.

I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That's why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place, and they're absolutely contradictory.

I'm scared of horses, and I don't know how to shoot them, but that's what excites me. After 40 years old, if you don't do some things that really terrify you, I don't think they're worth doing.

In families you can find the source of every human drama. It is interesting because the cell of a society, the cell of a country, the cell of humanity - everything lies in the family.

Really, Mexico City has always been this big, complex monster of a city that has always had real problems and needs, and I've always found my way through it in different ways.

I can't understand the conditions of a corporate product being designed and getting millions. I admire it, it's great, but I don't know how to do that. I have to have the wheel.

I'm overwhelmed by the pain in the world; I'm affected by the news very much, and adding that to my work was becoming a little bit too much.

I don't like the ironic tone that our pop culture, in the world, has taken. Everything is 'ironic.' Everything is 'cool.'

Films like 'Babel' can transcend the one point-of-view formula that has reigned for so long.

The corporation and the hedge funds have a hold on Hollywood, and they all want to make money on anything that signifies cinema.

Always when you are doing films, the themes swallow you in one way or another.

'Amores Perros' is rock, '21 Grams' is jazz, 'Babel' is an opera, and 'Biutiful' is a requiem.

As the camera, I try to subordinate every word to be truthful and honest to each character's context.

'Biutiful' is not about death. It's about life. It's a hymn to life.

Cannes or any other major festival is basically an animal in its own nature, creating very specific perceptions of films in a moment.

Cinema is an infinite medium, so we should take advantage of it, I think.

Do you know the phrase, 'The word 'water' will not wet you?' It's one thing to write down an idea and another thing entirely to execute it.

Everyone's terrified of being mediocre. Everyone wants to be special.

Filmmaking can give you everything, but at the same time, it can take everything from you.

For the actors, the talent is to serve the demands that I ask of them, to do it with naturality and truth, and to be honest when we were terrified.

Good directors don't answer questions with their work. They generate debate and create discussion.

I always have considered Michael Keaton to be a phenomenal actor because he navigates drama and comedy.

I am not a depressive person at all, but I reflect a lot on my life, and life in general, from the perspective of death.

I am not a depressive person at all.

I can be unbearable sometimes asking for so many takes.

I do think that the emotional weight of 'Biutiful' has blinded some viewers to the beauty and complexity of the film.

I have ADD. I can't pay attention to one thing too long.

I have been very lucky to have final cut in all my films; everything that is wrong in them is my fault.

I have learned that I am a one-woman man.

I have never met a superhero, but why are we so obsessed with superheroes?

I know how to work with people. I've worked with the same people for 10 years. I'm not that kind of auteur. I hear ideas.

I learned with 'Birdman' that it's liberating when you just lose yourself and go after something that terrifies you. The experience was so good.

I like to make films, but the only reason I do is because I'm a very bad musician.

I never deny a true experience in one shot.

I realized - and I am probably the last person in the world to realize this - that we live our lives with no editing.

I really didn't want to become branded as 'that multistructural guy.'

I really try, at least consciously, not to be cynical or ironic.

I started off writing TV adverts. I saw those as rehearsals for a feature film.

I think Kurosawa was one of the first storytelling geniuses who began to change the narrative structure of films.

I think that in order to be a film director, one has to be a warrior who shouldn't be defeated by the daily onslaught of problems.

I think that my films are basically family stories, beyond the fact that they are global and have political and social commentary.

I think that people would like to, at all times, reject death and disease with technology.

I think that when we wrestle with death... we start fearing life, because then we come to terms with something that is inevitable.

I think the most experimental way to a film is to tell the story the traditional way, because everyone is doing the other thing.

I think we are all connected in this world.

I think we do good things and bad things, sometimes simultaneously - or they may be the same thing.

I think when you turn 50 you get a little melancholic in a way.

I'm always surprised when some director says, 'When I saw this film, that changed my life.' I don't have that.

I love the three-act theory. It works and works beautifully. But you don't necessarily have to structure a story that way: Cortazar and Borges wrote in different structural styles.

I studied for three years in the theater, and it was a very, very scary experience to direct live, being so vulnerable without the possibility to control things, to be so exposed.

I think bad movies are made around the world, not just in Hollywood. There are as many bad art films in the whole world as there are bad commercial films.

I've listened to music all my life. I've always felt that music tells more stories sometimes than films, with more possibilities. Every time you listen to them, songs bring different images and moods - depending on where you are in your life, you can listen to a song and it means something different.

It's famous that comedians have a very dark personal state of mind. I think, in my case, it's the same. The only way to get deep is to have a balance, or a counterbalance.