John Sayles Quotes

I've always felt like I was on the margins. Once upon a time that's what independent used to mean.
John Sayles

Time, Mean, Once

And it was out in the theaters in two weeks. This is not, 'We're going to develop twenty-five and maybe one's going to get made,' so the first three things I wrote got up on the screen and, good, bad or indifferent, I got to see them on their feet.
John Sayles

Good, Bad, Made

Basically, if you could get a good trailer out of the script, Roger had no objection to you making a really good movie. He liked it if you did. He liked the more cleverness and ingenuity you could bring to it. He just wasn't going to give you any more money.
John Sayles

Good, Money, Give

But compared to writing a novel, where you can be God, I did the Bay of Pigs invasion in six pages once, and there were 50,000 guys with boots that I didn't have to pay, and all those extras; we didn't have to pay them.
John Sayles

God, Writing, Once

Fahrenheit 9/11 took public domain information that should have been on the news every night and put it in a film that a lot of people went to see. But still Bush has never had to answer those charges.
John Sayles

Night, Put, Film

For me the writing, when I'm going to direct it myself, is really just the first draft, and I don't change it very much; I only change it on average about two lines per movie.
John Sayles

Change, Writing, Two

I always feel that there are no final victories and no final defeats. But it's true that America is in a hole right now. There are a lot of dead fish in the water.
John Sayles

True, America, Dead

I certainly grew up seeing more movies and television than I read books, but when it came time to do the thing itself you don't have to hire a lot of people to sit down and write a book, so that was the story-telling medium that was available to me.
John Sayles

Time, Movies, Book

I figured somebody wrote a story who had a typewriter and I thought that movies were made by the cowboys and that they just said, 'Okay, you fall off the horse this time.'
John Sayles

Time, Movies, Thought

I figured, 'When is that ever going to happen again?'. So I basically set out the opposite way movies are made; I set out with a budget first. I said, 'What can I do well for $40,000?'.
John Sayles

Movies, Happen, Made

I like to act. I work for scale. I don't have an acting agent. I'm in the book.
John Sayles

Work, Book, Acting

I made it about a three-day weekend so people wouldn't have to change their clothes a lot. We didn't have an art department; we didn't have a make-up department.
John Sayles

Change, Art, Made

I never thought about being a writer as I grew up. A writer wasn't something I wanted to be. An outfielder was something to be. Most of what I know about style I learned from Roberto Clemente.
John Sayles

Thought, Learned, Wanted

I probably wouldn't have done as many as I did in one year, which I did when I was trying to raise money.
John Sayles

Money, Done, Trying

I remember being out here at the Sunset Marquis, and whoever knocked on the door, I would take that picture that I was writing and I would put that in the typewriter, so when I had the meeting, they would say: 'Oh, you're working on it right now?'
John Sayles

Writing, Remember, Working

I take more jobs when I need more money, if I'm investing in films. I take fewer when I don't. Or if something really good comes along, I usually find a way to do a good job on it in the time that I've got.
John Sayles

Time, Good, Money

I think I got spoiled and that writing a short story and getting it published, or writing a novel and getting it published, you pretty much get to do the first, second and third draft yourself without a whole lot of interference.
John Sayles

Yourself, Writing, Pretty

If you write a movie for Roger Corman, it's going to get made. You saw it almost the next day.
John Sayles

Made, Write, Almost

In a movie you have all these logistical problems; all these practical problems. But you're also going to have people come who can do things that you can't do, and you get to direct their talents.
John Sayles

Problems, Movie, Practical

Michael Moore, whether you like him or hate him, has done something very important.
John Sayles

Hate, Important, Done

My argument has always been that this is not an anti-Bush film, it's a pro-democracy film. And if Bush comes out on the wrong side of democracy, that's his problem.
John Sayles

Democracy, Problem, Wrong

Not that I've always loved the movie when they finally come out, or if they ever come out-because many of them don't come out-but I've gotten to work with really good story editors and stuff like that.
John Sayles

Work, Good, Loved

The hardest thing about movie acting is that if you're playing a character who changes within the movie, you've got to do that, but you've got to do it out of sequence, because we never have gotten to shoot in sequence, and that's really, really tough.
John Sayles

Character, Tough, Acting

The media in America has become so cowed and compromised.
John Sayles

America, Become, Media

There are genres I don't care for, and I've never worked in those genres, and then sometimes there are people that I haven't liked and I haven't worked for those people. But if I feel like there's a movie that I would like to go see, I'll jump into it.
John Sayles

Care, Sometimes, Movie

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Biography

Nationality: American

Born: September 28, 1950

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Cite this Page: Citation

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