David Fincher

"We wanted a title sequence that started in the fear center of the brain. [When you hear] the sound of a gun being cocked thats in your mouth, the part of you brain that gets everything going, that realizes that you are fucked - we see all the thought processes, we see the synapses firing, we see the chemical electrical impulses that are the call to arms. And we wanted to sort of follow that out. Because the movie is about thought, its about how this guy thinks. And its from his point of view, solely. So I liked the idea of starting a movie from thought, from the beginning of the first fear impulse that went, Oh shit, Im fucked, how did I get here?"

"Film-making encompasses everything, from tricking people into investing in it, to putting on the show, to trying to distill down to moments in time, and ape reality but send this other message. Its got everything. When I was a kid I loved to draw, and I loved my electric football sets, and I painted little things and made sculptures and did matte painting and comic books and illustrated stuff, and took pictures, had a darkroom, loved to tape-record stuff. Its all of that. Its not having to grow up. Its four-dimensional chess, its strategy, and its being painfully honest, and unbelievably deceitful, and everything in between."

"You want to be able to provide something, and youre pissing down a fucking well. It will suck you dry and take everything you have and, like being a parent, you can pour as much love as you want, and your kid still says, "Just let me right out here, you dont have to take me all the way." Youre working to make yourself obsolete. Im not going to make Persona - my movies are fairly obvious in what the people want and what it is thats happening; it;s not that internalized. Whats internalized is how you process the information from the singular, subjective point of view. And that becomes the subtext of it."

"Violence shouldnt be presented as drama. I think people looking for an easy way out often write scenes where characters come into violent conflict as opposed to looking for the true drama in the situation. Thats a shortcoming of a lot of films and television shows. I think certain presentations of violence are not immoral, but amoral."

"I find it amoral if youre making a movie where the problem is solved with a guy standing in the back of pickup truck firing a machine at the bad guys. The morality of it is questionable because the repercussions of violence are incredibly far-reaching."

"I always feel ill-prepared for commentaries and it had been so long I was afraid Id forget everything that happened on the film. But having everybody come together for it was really great. It was like a high school reunion. We all reminisced and just had a great time."

"I do like movies that take a toll on the audience. I want to work the subconscious. I want to involve you in ways in which you might not necessarily want to get involved. I want to play off those things that youre expecting to get when the lights go down and the 20th Century Fox logo comes up. Theres an audience expectation and Im interested in how movies play with--and off--that expectation. Thats what Im interested in."

"Oh, yeah, I love DVDs. I dont have what youd call an extensive collection, maybe a couple of hundred or so. But I have something on almost all the time."

"You know, I dont think Ive ever listened to someones commentary. Ever."

"I dont have the Tom Hanks fans. When you make the kind of movies I make, you get weird letters from people."

"I tend to over-intellectualize things, to come at them from a structural point."

"As much as people pretend I fit in, I understand, I get the rules, there are always times spent away from that where you go, I thought I knew. It seemed so clear to me, and then... That sense of loneliness, or the sense of not fitting in or being out of depth, is probably the most common denominator."