Quotes by Jim Jarmusch

A lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.

I hate those live action versions of animated cartoons. It ruins everything, the whole point of cartoons is to get away from photographs. I mean it would be stupid to say that cartoons are better than photographs but its true.

I'm not putting down anyone that does look at their work in that way, but for me I am a hardcore amateur.

I think you can only be nostalgic for something you've lost.

I like all forms of movies. I'm a movie geek, so I watch all kinds of films, but -- and I read all kinds of things, too. But the poetry that speaks to me the most directly will contain mundane things, will contain details.

My films have sort of amateur elements, a naive quality, yet they have some sophisticated quality, sometimes the rhythm is kinda elegant.

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films--although I think they do have plots--but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.

No mistakes can be make during rehearsals, only progress toward what works best.

Ghost Dog: In the words of the ancients, one should make his decision within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break through to the other side.

In the words of the ancients, one should make his decision within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break through to the other side.

It's a sad and beautiful world.

If you have a counterculture band, you put a name on it, you call them beatniks, and you can sell something -- books or bebop. Or you label them as hippies and you can sell tie-dyed T-shirts.

The counterculture is always repackaged and made into a product. It's part of America.

When you separate an entwined particle and you move both parts away from the other, even at opposite ends of the universe, if you alter or affect one, the other will be identically altered or affected. Spooky. (Adam in Only Lovers Left Alive).

The filmmaker Amos Poe was a huge inspiration for me by making guerrilla-style punk films on the streets of New York and -- well, it's just a lot of painters and artists and filmmakers all within that scene, and it's very, very important to me.

I'm not into killing living things, you know, but I'll always have guns.

I think of myself as an amateur filmmaker, not a professional, in the sense that amateur means love of something, for the form.

I'm not an analytical person, so it's not my job to even know what the hell the thing meant. It's not my problem. I'm just supposed to do it. Sometimes, people have explained things to me that I might have been semi-conscious of or not.

In Hollywood Westerns even in the Thirties and Forties, history was mythologized to accommodate some kind of moral code. And what really affects me deeply is when you see it taken to the extent where Native Americans become mythical people.

Specific music starts feeding my imagination and gives me a landscape that corresponds somehow, in some abstract way, to the world I'm just starting to imagine.

I think people should have the right to bear arms, but they should be limited as to what kinds of guns they can have.

Making a film that is in seven days of one week is not a new idea.

The beauty of life is in small details, not in big events.

Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.

Some people would find just the rhythm of my films alone to be a nightmare; they'd probably just fall asleep because they want something quicker. Other people fall into it and it works for them like a dream.

A cult classic... both a celebration of the unlimited potential of the comic book form, and a perfect melding of inspiring, iconoclastic imaginations.

Film relates to almost every other form of expression, but poetry is a bit abstract in its strength and sometimes even the white spaces on the page are evocative almost as much as where the text is. Certain poets have played with that.

Music, to me, is the most beautiful form, and I love film because film is very related to music. It moves by you in its own rhythm... Imagine the world without music. Man, just hand me a gun, will you?

When I get depressed, or anything, I go 'think of all the music I haven't even heard yet!' So, it's the one thing. Imagine the world without music. Man, just hand me a gun, will you?

I still consider myself to be an amateur filmmaker. And I say that because in the Latin origin of the word amateur is the word love, and it's love of a form, whereas professional implies something you do for money or for work.

Kenneth Koch taught us to be playful, to be very appreciative of other poets, to appreciate all forms of expression. He taught us to be experimental.

Select only things to steal that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is nonexistent.

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination   Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery -- celebrate it if you feel like it.

Good acting is about reacting, not tryingto express something, but reacting to a situation as the character.I don't like acting acting.

I love silent films. The future is unwritten.

I love variation in all forms: in painting, in music.

I'm very interested in variations.

I like repetition, but I really, really like variations, synchronistic things that happen where you're not really thinking about them.

I find it very odd that the amendment about the right to bear arms, laws that were written so long ago, still pertain and don't get adjusted properly. Because the right to bear arms doesn't mean automatic weaponry designed specifically for human combat.

I thought The Limits of Control could be interpreted in two ways: as the limits of one's self-control; and as the limits of allowing other people's control over one's -- consciousness -- which I kind of thought was a double meaning that was appropriate.

When I hear the word independent I reach for my revolver. At this point, what the hell does that mean? The English Patient is an independent film... Hootie and the Blowfish are alternative music. I'm the Queen of Denmark. I don't know what it means anymore.

I like marginal characters, I like real people. I learn more from talking to my plumber when he comes to fix my toilet than I do from meeting a movie star. I think my movies are in the same vein as that.

I'm like a navigator and I try to encourage our collaboration and find the best way that will produce fruit. I like fruit. I like cherries, I like bananas.

It's hard to get lost if you don't know where you're going.

I didn't go to classes there, but ended up at the Cinematheque, and there it opened up even wider because there I saw a variety of films from all over the world.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

I started working with friends of mine and that, to some degree, continues.

What I did was I completed the half-hour film, but before really showing it, I wrote two more sections for a potential feature film which I didn't think would really happen, but at least I had it in case.

Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision.

It was a really interesting time in New York in the late 70s and early 80s, and the music scene was really, really interesting because you didn't have to be a virtuoso to make music, it was more about your desire to express things.

If you go into a bar in most places in America and even say the word poetry, you'll probably get beaten up. But poetry is a really strong, beautiful form to me, and a lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.

I've always loved films, always. I studied literature and I went to Columbia in New York and I went to Paris for part of one year and ended up staying there.

I'd wanted to be a writer and when I came back to New York worked as a musician too, but I found my writing starting to get more and more referential to cinema.

I love rehearsing because in rehearsals there are no mistakes, nothing is wrong, some things apply or lead you to focus on the character and the things that don't apply are equally valuable because they lead you to towards what does.

I didn't get my degree at NYU; I got it later, they gave me an honourary one.

Baseball is one of the most beautiful games. It is. It is a very Zen-like game.

When I left Ohio when I was 17 and ended up in New York and realised that not all films had the giant crab monsters in them, it really opened up a lot of things for me.

The intention was to shoot short films that can exist as shorts independently, but when I put them all together, there are things that echo through them like the dialogue repeats; the situation is always the same, the way they're shot is very simple and the same.

I think of poets as outlaw visionaries in a way.

I like to rehearse with the actors scenes that are not in the script and will not be in the film because what we're really doing is trying to establish their character, and good acting to me is about reacting.

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films -- although I think they do have plots -- but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.

I don't like American football. I think it's boring and ridiculous and predictable. But baseball is very beautiful. It's played on a diamond.

I didn't get the degree because in my last year, for my thesis film I made a feature called Permanent Vacation and they'd given me a scholarship, the Louis B Mayer fellowship and they made a mistake.

I always think the Sex Pistols and the Ramones as very, very important because they stripped things down.

A lot of poets too live on the margins of social acceptance, they certainly aren't in it for the money. William Blake -- only his first book was legitimately published.

Before she married my father, my mother was a film reviewer for The Akron Beacon Journal -- a small newspaper.

Cricket makes no sense to me. I find it beautiful to watch and I like that they break for tea. That is very cool, but I don't understand. My friends from The Clash tried to explain it years and years ago, but I didn't understand what they were talking about.

Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.

I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn't play, it has a poignancy to it.

Hopefully, if not it's not working right. I'm like a navigator and I try to encourage our collaboration and find the best way that will produce fruit. I like fruit. I like cherries, I like bananas.