282 Quotes by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

How can [actors] learn their lines and be honest in front of 30 people and all the lights? It makes me cry sometimes. I can't understand how they can be joking with me 30 seconds before, and 40 seconds later they're giving me all this incredible feeling.

I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That's why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place, and they're absolutely contradictory.

I saw what I could [in Mexico City], but we rarely got anything other than big, mainstream American films.

I'm scared of horses, and I don't know how to shoot them, but that's what excites me. After 40 years old, if you don't do some things that really terrify you, I don't think they're worth doing.

Mexico City is very different now than when I grew up, but I was in the streets all the time - though I was born to a middle-class neighborhood where there weren't a lot of gangs and things. I was always comfortable.

In families you can find the source of every human drama. It is interesting because the cell of a society, the cell of a country, the cell of humanity - everything lies in the family.

I think the arts should get big support, but my country has a lot of needs more important than film. Medication, education, food... The poverty is overwhelming. There are simply more important things to be attended to.

Really, Mexico City has always been this big, complex monster of a city that has always had real problems and needs, and I've always found my way through it in different ways.

I understand when there's no money for the arts in the government, but it should maybe pressure private companies to support more filmmakers. These exhibition and distribution companies are huge, and there might be incentives for them to invest more in Mexican cinema.