David O. Russell Quotations

I think it [films] was my passion without it being declared like a job that I could have, or a career that I could have.

The holy trifecta of directing and filmmaking is character emotion, camera movement and music. When you hit those three, that's magical. That's what I'm trying to do.

I make every movie and every scene like it could be my last. That's the only way I know how to make cinema that stands on its feet. I have to treat it like that. It has to be life and death stakes.

What we assert, very often can become our reality. To some degree, everybody can try to shape and control their fate. Everybody picks an identity.

Just work on your craft hard - that's your only hope of doing anything worthwhile.

The romance is essential. I love the love. I don't love just people struggling. I love what people are struggling for. That moves me. I love watching people be loving, and I find it enchanting, magical and transporting. It's one of the reasons that I go to the movies, and that's why I like putting it in movies.

You should always make it like it's your last film. That's my personal belief. Every filmmaker is going to have another belief. That's the only way I know to try to make a film that might be good. You got to take it real seriously like it's your last thing.

Life just happens the way it's supposed to happen. It delivers you to where it delivers you.

There's nothing better than having a collaborator that you have a great shorthand with and a great comfort with who's shepherding the project along. I mean, that's the best thing that can happen in cinema where there's many cooks in the kitchen.

As people, my parents,were very colorful, very talkative, passionate, they really loved each other. But that also meant heated, it meant there was a lot of drama in the house. Which is good for a filmmaker, I think.