David Cronenberg quotes

David Cronenberg is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter, and actor, widely recognized for his work in the body horror genre. His films often explore themes of technology, psychology, and the transformation of the human body. He is considered one of the most influential directors in modern horror and science fiction cinema. Here are 54 of his quotes:

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos. (David Cronenberg)

I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you're making a horror film doesn't mean you can't make an artful film.

David Cronenberg

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.

David Cronenberg

All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true.

David Cronenberg

The problem with doing a schlocky or big budget studio film is that it wouldn't actually be fun for me. It wouldn't be exciting.

David Cronenberg

For me, the first fact of human existence is the human body. But if you embrace the reality of the human body, you embrace mortality, and that is a very difficult thing for anything to do because the self-conscious mind cannot imagine non-existence. It's impossible to do.

David Cronenberg

The desire to be loved is really death when it comes to art.

David Cronenberg

When you're in the muck you can only see muck. If you somehow manage to float above it, you still see the muck but you see it from a different perspective. And you see other things too. That's the consolation of philosophy.

David Cronenberg

I'm always working on the same thing, the creation of an identity. It's mysterious: We think identity is genetically given, but I believe there is creative will involved with the decision of who we are going to be. All my movies are concerned with this.

David Cronenberg

I think all my movies are commercial. That's my delusion. I thought Naked Lunch was wildly entertaining, so what do I know?

David Cronenberg

I'm an atheist, and so I have a philosophical problem with demonology and supporting the mythology of Satan, which involves God and heaven and hell and all that stuff. I'm not just a nonbeliever, I'm an antibeliever - I think it's a destructive philosophy. (David Cronenberg)

I know that many artists feel that they are frauds - that's part of the pleasure of creativity.

David Cronenberg

I'm just observing the world. I was born into it, like you were, and then I found out there were some really disturbing aspects to being alive, like the fact that you weren't going to be alive forever - that bothered me.

David Cronenberg

Re-writing is different from writing. Original writing is very difficult.

David Cronenberg

My dentist said to me the other day: I've enough problems in my life, so why should I see your films?

David Cronenberg

Technology is us. There is no separation. It's a pure expression of human creative will. It doesn't exist anywhere else in the universe. I'm rather sure of that.

David Cronenberg

Well I don't think sex and violence have ever stopped a movie from being mainstream.

David Cronenberg

The more unique your film is and unusual it is and difficult it is, the harder it is to get it financed. That's why a lot of good filmmakers are doing television. They do HBO movies.

David Cronenberg

But when you're writing a script - for me anyway - you have to sort of create an enforced innocence. You have to divest yourself of worrying about a lot of stuff like what movies are hot, what movies are not hot, what the budget of this movie might be.

David Cronenberg

For example I don't work with William Hurt the same way that I will work with Viggo. They're different guys and they work in different ways. So a good sensitive director has his general style and technique and personality that he uses but you don't impose that on the actors.

David Cronenberg

We are at a major epoch in human history, which is that we don't need sex to recreate the race. You can have babies without sex. This is the first time in human history that has been true, and it means, for example, we could do some extraordinary things. (David Cronenberg)

The process of making a movie has expanded in terms of effort and time for the director, doing commentaries for the DVD for example, finishing deleted scenes so they could be on the DVD, and doing things like a web blog.

David Cronenberg

Even Hitchcock liked to think of himself as a puppeteer who was manipulating the strings of his audience and making them jump. He liked to think he had that kind of control.

David Cronenberg

You have to believe in God before you can say there are things that man was not meant to know. I don't think there's anything man wasn't meant to know. There are just some stupid things that people shouldn't do.

David Cronenberg

I never thought I was doing the same thing as directors like John Carpenter, George Romero, and sometimes even Hitchcock, even though I've been sometimes compared to those other guys. We're after different game.

David Cronenberg

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David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg - Image

Photo: Canadian Film Centre from Toronto, Canada, CC BY 2.0

Occupation: Canadian Director
Born: March 15, 1943
Quotes count: 54
Wikipedia: David Cronenberg

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