Christopher McQuarrie

“The truth of the matter is movies are a reflection of life and violence is a real part of life. I don't think you could make movies exclusively where there was no violence.”

“I am not interested in telling you what to think. My job is to show you what I think. Period.”

“What makes a movie now is a package, a brand, a remake or some preexisting material.”

“Directing has completely changed the way I write and watch films.”

“Directing my own writing, I see that I talk way too much, and everything can happen much sooner, with much less said about it.”

“I was writing from the time I was 12 years old, but I originally wanted to be a novelist.”

“I love traveling around promoting different movies because I'm always looking at different places, and I always walk around to see the city.”

“Knowledge is death in my experience. The more I know about film, the harder it is to create freely.”

“The way I like to describe Hollywood today is this: everyone wants to make 'Deliverance,' but no one wants to be Ned Beatty.”

“Scripts don't get movies made.”

“I've rewritten other films and watched my writing be mutilated, but luckily, it's been mutilated anonymously.”

“Success is never bad in Hollywood. It is what you do with success that will dog you.”

“For everything you give an audience, you always have to take one thing away. They always have to pay for the story.”

“I'm saying, let's learn to reacquire a respect for the power of guns. This culture is so indifferent and disrespectful of guns that we should be terrified.”

“There is no 'Top Gun 2' in which Maverick is not the starring role.”

“'The Way of the Gun' I wrote in five days.”

“Ideally, I'd like to have a movie that people like and makes money.”

“My films do very well on home video.”

“When you're making a film, you don't really have time to consider what the whole of your film is. And then, when you're releasing your film and promoting your film, you're looking at it in a different way. Then, as you move away from it, you start to look at it objectively and think, 'What could I have done better?'”

“The one thing that frustrates me more than anything else is that no studio has ever told me to tone down violence. They only ask you to make it more presentable.”