- It's my conceit that perhaps some diseases perceived as diseases that destroy a well-functioning machine actually turn it into a new but still well-functioning machine with a different purpose. The AIDS virus: look at it from its point of view. Very vital, very excited, really having a good time. It's really a triumph if you're a virus. See the movies from the disease's point of view. You can see why they would resist all attempts to destroy them. These are all cerebral games, but they have emotional correlatives as well.
- Since I see technology as being an extension of the human body, it's inevitable that it should come home to roost.
- My dentist said to me the other day: I've enough problems in my life, so why should I see your films?
- 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.
- 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.
- Drugs and creativity don't go together for me. Like everybody in the '60s, I had one acid trip and some cocaine and hash, you know, the stuff everyone did. But it's been 30 or 40 years since I bothered to do that. What I need is clarity. Even not having enough sleep is a problem for me, never mind doing any kind of drugs.
- "Yeah, it is metaphorical...it isn't just a special effect in a vacuum." - on the exploding head in Scanners (1981).
- 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.
- 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.
- Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.
- I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontations. 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.
- If you look at a baby, the most fascinating thing to a baby, a newborn, is the human face. The baby will look at your face and watch your face move and want to touch it. If it's a fantastic head and what it's talking about is fantastic, then you can't have anything better. It's the best!
- Civilization is repression. You don't get civilization without repression of the unconscious, of the id. And the basic appeal of art is to the unconscious. Therefore, art is somewhat subversive of civilization. And yet at the same time it seems necessary for civilization. You don't get civilization without art.
- You need language for thought, and you need language to anticipate death. There is no abstract thought without language and no anticipation. I think the anticipation of death without language would be impossible.
- If religion is used to allow you to come to terms with death, and also to guide you in how you live your life, then I think art can do the same thing. But in a schematic way, in a much less rigid and absolute way, which is why it appeals to me and religion doesn't.
- The versions of The Dead Zone (1983) and The Fly (1986) that you find on video carry my name, and they are the films that I made, but I hate the way they look on tape. Too bright.
- I have no rules. For me, it's a full, full experience to make a movie. It takes a lot of time, and I want there to be a lot of stuff in it. You're looking for every shot in the movie to have resonance and want it to be something you can see a second time, and then I'd like it to be something you can see 10 years later, and it becomes a different movie, because you're a different person. So that means I want it to be deep, not in a pretentious way, but I guess I can say I am pretentious in that I pretend. I have aspirations that the movie should trigger off a lot of complex responses.
- We've all got the disease - the disease of being finite. Death is the basis of all horror.
- As filmmaker, I ask questions but don't have answers. Moviemaking is a philosophical exploration. I invite the audience to come on the journey and discover what they think and feel.
- My movies are body-conscious. The first fact of human existence is the human body. If you get away from physical reality, you're fudging, in fantasy land, not coming to grips with what violence does.
- We question a country's self-mythology. Perfect town and perfect family are - like Westerns - part of America's mythology, involving notions of past innocence and naïveté. But is it possible for innocence to exist while something heinous transpires elsewhere? What does it take for a country to be rich and prosperous? What does that country do to the world?
- To me, the life that we live is heaven. My idea of paradise is life on Earth. But we often don't know it, and can't see it that way, until, I'm sure, we start to leave it. I guess that's the way I feel about film
- I don't have a moral plan. I'm a Canadian.
- (on being voted the Peoples Choice at the 2007 T.I.F.F.) I feel like I've just been elected prime minister of Canada!
- I identify with the parasites.
- When we talk about violence, we're talking about the destruction of the human body, and I don't lose sight of that. In general, my filmmaking is fairly body-oriented, because what you're photographing is people, bodies. You can't really photograph an abstract concept, whereas a novelist can write about that. You have to photograph something physical. So that combination of things suggests to me a particular way to deal with violence. And it's not a bad thing that people really understand what violence is. It's not, however, a politically correct thing I do. I'm not a big fan of political correctness. It's very detrimental to art in general. An artist's responsibility is to be irresponsible. As soon as you start to think about social or political responsibility, you've amputated the best limbs you've got as an artist. You are plugging into a very restrictive system that is going to push and mold you, and is going to make your art totally useless and ineffective.
- If I were doing a comedy with somebody slipping on a banana peel, I wouldn't show the reality of slipping on a banana peel, which could be quite horrific, involving cracked skulls and broken spines and crippling. You have to do what's appropriate to the movie.
- When I am doing art, I have absolutely no social responsibilities whatsoever -- it's like dreaming.
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