- “I was kind of excited about going to jail the first time and I learnt some great dialogue.”
- “Violence is one of the most fun things to watch”
- “This CGI bullshit is the death knell of cinema. If I'd wanted all that computer game bullshit, I'd have stuck my dick in a Nintendo.”
- “I steal from every movie ever made.”
- “I'm not, you know, Ronald McDonald opening up this Kmart or something, ... Rather than asking me for my autograph, you're actually watching a movie with me. If you want to sit there and talk about how to get into the business and ask me questions about 'Pulp Fiction' I'm not going to be very responsive. I'll probably shut you down. All right? But if you want to talk to me about the movie we just showed and what you thought about it, I'll talk to you all (expletive) night.”
- (At MTV Movie Awards 1994) As he won Best Picture for Pulp Fiction (1994) "Pop quiz, hotshot: you go to the awards ceremonies all year long; you keep losing to Forrest Gump (1994)! It's really annoying the hell out of you - what do you do? You go to the MTV Awards!"
- On "rival" director Guy Ritchie marrying Madonna: "I guess I'll have to marry Elvis Presley to get even."
- If I've made it a little easier for artists to work in violence, great! I've accomplished something.
- When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, 'no, I went to films.'
- On using surfing music, when hating the surfing culture: "It's like surf music, I've always like loved that but, for me, I don't know what surf music has to do with surf boards. To me, it just sounds like rock and roll, even Morricone music. It sounds like rock and roll Spaghetti Western music, so that's how I kind of laid it in."
- Movies are my religion and God is my patron. I'm lucky enough to be in the position where I don't make movies to pay for my pool. When I make a movie, I want it to be everything to me; like I would die for it.
- On the comparison between Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)'s group fight and Neo vs. 100 Agent Smiths in The Matrix Reloaded (2003): "First off, I've always thought of the black suits as mine, so I don't think of them as Agent Smiths, I think of them as Reservoir Dogs with less cool sunglasses. The similarities between the fight sequences never occurred to me until I had a director's screening and Luc Besson turned up with Keanu Reeves as his guest. I watched Keanu watching and suddenly I felt it."
- On media criticisms of violence in his movies: "Sure, Kill Bill's a violent movie. But it's a Tarantino movie. You don't go to see Metallica and ask the fuckers to turn the music down."
- On media criticisms of violence in his movies: "What if a kid goes to school after seeing Kill Bill and starts slicing up other kids? You know, I'll take that chance! Violent films don't turn children into violent people. They may turn them into violent filmmakers but that's another matter altogether."
- On collecting movies: "If you're a film fan, collecting video is sort of like marijuana. Laser discs, they're definitely cocaine. Film prints are heroin, all right? You're shooting smack when you start collecting film prints. So, I kinda got into it in a big way, and I've got a pretty nice collection I'm real proud of."
- On how to take the violence in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003) (re: The final duel with Lucy Liu): "It's supposed to be kind of amusing and poetic at the same time. And also just a teeny-tiny bit solemn. When you see her head, it's funny. And then her line, 'that really was a Hattori Hanzo sword,' that's funny. But then, the next shot is not funny, when she tips over and Meiko Kaji is singing about revenge on the soundtrack. So, it's all together. Funny. Solemn. Beautiful. Gross. All at the same time."
- On becoming famous: "Going into a videostore and going through the videos, looking at every title they have, trying to find some old spaghetti western, that's gone."
- I have an idea for a Godzilla movie that I've always wanted to do. The whole idea of Godzilla's role in Tokyo, where he's always battling these other monsters, saving humanity time and again- wouldn't Godzilla become God? It would be called Living Under the Rule of Godzilla. This is what society is like when a big fucking green lizard rules your world.
- On violence in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003): "When I was on "The View" (1997), Barbara Walters was asking me about the blood and stuff, and I said, 'Well, you know, that's a staple of Japanese cinema.' And then she came back,'But this is America.' And I go, 'I don't make movies for America. I make movies for planet Earth.'"
- On directing the "ER" (1994) episode "Motherhood": "When I was directing ER, I didn't want to stand out. Everyone else is wearing all that crap. I wanted to fit in. I didn't want to be the odd man out. I wanted to be inside, not on the outside. When I was directing the ER thing, the emergency room guys wore the green scrubs. I wore those for a few days. Then, I wore the blue scrubs, which were the surgeons,' for a few days. When I wore the nurse's pink scrubs, though, that's when I became a hero on the set. The nurses didn't think I was going to throw in with them. I ended the episode, the last two days, wearing the nurses' scrubs. When I walked on the set all the nurses applauded me. They were like, 'Oh my God, he's so cool!'"
- On Thriller - en grym film (1974) and its influences on Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003): "And that is, of all the revenge movies I've ever seen, that is definitely the roughest. The roughest revenge movie ever made! There's never been anything as tough as that movie."
- "If you want to make a movie, make it. Don't wait for a grant, don't wait for the perfect circumstances, just make it." - Giving advice to young aspiring filmmakers at the 1994 Independent Spirit Awards
- I hope to give you at least 15 more years of movies. I'm not going to be this old guy that keeps cranking them out. My plan is to have a theater by that time in some small town and I will be the manager - this crazy old movie guy. (March 2005)
- I will never do 'Pulp Fiction 2', but having said that, I could very well do other movies with these characters.
- I've come to a point where I like Pauline Kael's reviews of Godard more than Godard's films.
- (On making another "Kill Bill" movie) "Oh yeah, initially I was thinking this would be my "Dollars Trilogy". I was going to do a new one every ten years. But I need at least fifteen years before I do this again. I've already got the whole mythology: Sofie Fatale will get all of Bill's money. She'll raise Nikki, who'll take on The Bride. Nikki deserves her revenge every bit as much as The Bride deserved hers. I might even shoot a couple of scenes for it now so I can get the actresses while they're this age."
- I'm never going to be shy about anything, what I write about is what I know; it's more about my version of the truth as I know it. That's part of my talent, really - putting the way people really speak into the things I write. My only obligation is to my characters. And they came from where I have been.
- The exploitation films were made in such an artless way with these big wide shots of Sunset Boulevard or of Arcadia or downtown L.A. or wherever. In mainstream films, especially in the 1980s, the Los Angeles you saw wasn't the real one; it was a character with this back-lot sort of atmosphere. They tried to luxuriate it. In exploitation films, you see what the place really looked like, you see the bars and mom-and-pop restaurants.
- There's only one list that's more illustrious than the list of directors who won the Palme d'Or. It's the list of directors who didn't.
- I don't believe in putting in music as a band aid to get you over some rough parts or bad film making. If it's there it's got to add to it or take it to another level.
- When I give props to these movies, you have to understand - it's not like they were all good. There's an expression: You have to drink a lot of milk before you can appreciate cream. Well, with exploitation movies, you have to drink a lot of milk-gone-bad before you can even appreciate milk! That's what part of the love of these movies is - going through the rummage bin and finding the jewels.
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Movie/TV title: Pulp Fiction
Movie/TV title: Pulp Fiction
Movie/TV title: Reservoir Dogs
Movie/TV title: Desperado