Todd Solondz Quotations

I can't please everybody and I don't try to. If I can please myself that's enough. For the rest, I just hope for the best.

What makes me angry is the idea that people would be going to a movie because of what I said about it. It makes me feel, I don't know, arrogant, self-important, self-aggrandizing, whatever. Like I'm being used.

I've always said that I myself am not the best audience for my own work, because I'm just not that receptive to comedy.

I don't make movies with the idea that people are going to walk out of them feeling comfortable or better about themselves or more secure in their own biases or opinions.

Art has a smaller audience than, say, movies or other forms of mass consumption. But that doesn't mean the work doesn't have an impact in a way that transcends just a few cultural arbiters.

Artwork can be a portal, a kind of rethinking and reseeing of the world as we live it.

Compromise is part and parcel of making a movie. It's a question of the kinds of compromises that you have to make.

Some people see me as dissecting my characters in some kind of heartless, coldblooded, analytical way, when in truth making these movies is a passionate, intensely emotional experience for me. I'm detached from the characters only to the degree that I have to be in order to write honestly about them.

There are a lot of ideas I have that I think would be very marketable and commercial, but they're not as compelling to me as the ones that are unmarketable, uncommercial, and unprofitable.

I think success is a lot more healthy than failure.