Samuel Fuller Quotes

Life is in color, but black and white is more realistic.

If a story doesn't give you a hard-on in the first couple of scenes, throw it in the goddamned garbage.

When you're at the end of your rope, all you have to do is make one foot move out in front of the other. Just take the next step. That's all there is to it

A film is like a battleground. It's love, hate, action, violence, death—In one word, emotions.

Ninety-five per cent of films are born of frustration, of self despair, of ambition for survival, for money, for fattening bank accounts. Five per cent, maybe less, are made because a man has an idea, an idea which he must express.

Extending the language of film sometimes starts with just trying to show one true thing.

A woman is just a script, but a cigar is a motion picture.

I hate violence. That has never prevented me from using it in my films.

Surviving is the only glory in war.

Heroes? Don't believe in them.

We have too many intellectuals who are afraid to use the pistol of common sense

Film is a battleground. Love, hate, violence, action, death...In a word, emotion.

Movement should be a counter, whether in action scenes or dialogue or whatever. It counters where your eye is going. This style thing, for me it's all fitted to the action, to the script, to the characters.

We'll build a democracy here, even if it's with Nazi bricks.

The creepy thing about battle is you always feel alone.

If your first scene doesn't give you a hard on, throw it out!

Being a hooker does not mean being evil. The same with a pick-pocket, or even a thief. You do what you do out of necessity.

We got a right to climb out of the sewer and live like other people. We could start from scratch. Make every minute count twice for the one we lost.

We don't murder, we kill.... You don't murder animals, you kill them.

I don't care if it's a mystery story, a Western, or the story of Julius Caesar. To me it's the emotion, the lies, the double-cross, whether it's Brutus doing it to Caesar or Bob Stack doing it to Robert Ryan that defines what kind of drama it is.

When I was making these damned pictures, I never knew about film noir. If you had asked me about it then, I probably would have pointed to something like Bill Wellman's The Ox Bow Incident, the best Western I ever saw and very much in the style of film noir I don't care if it's a mystery story, a Western, or the story of Julius Caesar. To me it's the emotion, the lies, the double-cross that defines what kind of drama it is.

There's a difference between a Nazi and a German.

You know how you smoke out a sniper? You send a guy out in the open, and you see if he gets shot. They thought that one up at West Point

Film is a battleground.

Mark Twain didn't psychoanalyze Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer. Dickens didn't put Oliver Twist on the couch because he was hungry! Good copy comes out of people, Johnny, not out of a lot of explanatory medical terms.