97 Quotes by William Friedkin

I don’t think sexuality defines a person. It’s one small part of who you are, in my view. You are many things, and I never felt that people were defined by their sexuality solely.

I don’t believe that Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind, or any damn picture that you can name, would be better off in 3D. I think it’s a gimmick. I find 3D distracting.

Edgar Allan Poe is considered the great writer of horror stories, perhaps the greatest – I will say the greatest.

Every time you run a 35mm print, it picks up scratches. It picks up dirt. Sometimes it breaks, and you have to re-splice it. You lose frames. This doesn’t happen with digital or Blu-ray. I think that’s great. Because I love the new media.

If you call yourself a non-believer, you’re referring to disbelief in something, and you’re acknowledging that there is something to believe in or not.

The informing idea of what you want to say and do, that’s what will take you from film school to professional – the idea. That’s what is original to you.

Sure, you could go out and make Jaws today. But all of the sequels to Jaws weren’t good. They are all worthless. The Godfather II is the only sequel that I have ever seen that is as good as or better than the original.

Even with some of the best action films like The Bourne Ultimatum, which is a great action film with a great chase sequence, so much of it is computer-generated. But that doesn’t bother me. I think it works. It’s fantastic.

I don’t go to the movies much anymore. There’s very little that draws me. I watch mostly the older stuff, and I often don’t sit through the new films.