You know, I dont think Ive ever listened to someones commentary. Ever. — 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 dont have the Tom Hanks fans. When you make the kind of movies I make, you get weird letters from people."