Todd Solondz Quotes

Narcissism and self-deception are survival mechanisms without which many of us might just jump off a bridge.

Storytelling is the only studio movie where the censorship is perfectly clear, the only studio movie with a big red box covering up a shot. I take pride in that - and, of course, in having avoided the fate of Eyes Wide Shut.

The ability to take pleasure in one's life is a skill and is a kind of intelligence.

We say we embrace humanity, but what does that mean? We are all defined by our limits, so to what extent can we embrace all this? Because we all contain within ourselves equally the capacity for kindness, as much as for cruelty or evil. And the best of us are able to suppress those baser impulses, instincts. That's the war within.

When I want to show the kind of meanness people are capable of, to make it believable I find I have to tone it down. It's in real life that people are over the top.

Some people will of course accuse me of misanthropy and cynicism. I can't celebrate humanity but I'm not out to indict it either. I just want to expose certain truths.

So far, at least, I haven't found a way to tell my kind of stories without making them both sad and funny.

For me, New Jersey is kind of a mythical place. It's emblematic of a certain aspect of American life. Florida is the same way. It's where people go to recreate, to reinvent themselves. It's what California used to be. I think Florida is still a place to erase the past.

In particular, people have trouble understanding where I stand in relation to my characters, and very often this gets reduced to me making vicious fun of them.

So much of what a pet is about for us is that it becomes a vessel for yearnings, dreams, illusions, hopes and so forth. It's a projection of the ultimate innocence and purity. That's why it's hard to see a dog in its dogness. That's why, when some harm comes to a dog, it's much harder for an audience to deal with that, more so than dealing with harm that comes to a child or anything human.

That is definitely a misunderstanding between me and a part of my audience. To be honest, I am often unsettled by the responses some people have had to my movies, and that includes many people who like them.

When I go to the movies, I do like to see things that surprise me, a little bit, in ways that seem truthful to the world that we live in.

Art has a smaller audience than, say, movies or other forms of mass consumption. But that doesn't mean the work doesn't have an impact in a way that transcends just a few cultural arbiters.

Usually the audience has no idea that the censored version of whatever movie they're watching isn't the original.

I mean, there are many other directors who are probably both more skilled and excited to adapt novels or work within certain genre conventions. I'd like to do that kind of work someday, but for better or worse I'm too drawn by my own material.

Artwork can be a portal, a kind of rethinking and reseeing of the world as we live it.

Optimism is not inherently a superior way of viewing the world. Certainly doctors will say it might be better for one's physical health to be an optimist. But, morally speaking it may not be appropriate in certain circumstances.

The ability to take pleasure in one's life is a skill and is a kind of intelligence. So intelligence is a hard thing to evaluate and it manifests itself in so many different ways. I do think the ability to know how to live a life and not be miserable is a sign of that.

What's most insidious about MTV is that it commodifies precisely those things that young people believe are subversive. In other words, subversity itself has become a commodity. It's all a way to trick young people into believing that there's something unique about what they do, but this is all completely a corporately designed maneuver.

Every time you try to make another movie, you never know what will come of it. I can't say it ever gets easier, but it is in it's own way gratifying. I think that because no one movie that you make ever quite satisfies you, you're always feeling, "Next time I can get it right."

I admit there’s an element of brutality in all my work - it’s part of the truth about human existence I always want to explore - but the last thing I’m trying to do is put on some kind of freak show, inviting people to get off on other people’s pain and humiliation.

Part of it has to do with this business of being approached in public. I have a distinctive look - it's partly the glasses I wear - and people seem to remember me once they've seen me.

But anonymity is very important to me, and I don't want to be recognized in public more than I already am.

The funny thing is, strangers still seem to feel comfortable coming up to me and saying things, but now usually it’s because they recognize me, and they say nice things.

One thing I want to say: I don't like victim stories and I don't write them.