George Cukor

“You can always land on your feet if you know where the ground is.”

“Women's director! Well, I'm very pleased to be considered a master of anything, but remember, for every Jill there was a Jack. People like to pigeonhole you - it's a shortcut, I guess, but once they do, you're stuck with it.”

“We've all been tired and thought we wanted a long vacation when all we needed was a few days off, but didn't know it.”

“If she was a victim of any kind, she was a victim of her friends.”

“It is reassuring for people to feel they have a boss, someone who knows the answers and has charted the course.”

“Anyone who looked at something special, in a very original way, makes you see it that way forever.”

“So many directors say nothing beautifully, and so many others say great and profound things but have no idea how to read a light meter or arrange a shot.”

“I don't think you can teach people how to be funny. You can make suggestions about how to speak a line or get a laugh, but it has to be in them.”

“Give me a good script, and I'll be a hundred times better as a director.”

“People who aren't complicated in real life come through as pretty bland on the screen. Most great performers are not very happy and well adjusted. Perhaps that's the price they pay for being originals.”

“I work through the actors, and the more successful I am, the less my work is apparent.”

“I was a stage-struck kid.”

“Unless the story line carries the scenes, the scenes don't really mean anything.”

“Looking for love is tricky business, like whipping a carousel horse.”

“As a professional, it pains me to watch a movie that is botched and amateurish. I prefer directors who have control of both their craft and their ideas.”

“I suppose they call me a woman's director because there were all these movie queens in the old days, and I directed most of them. But I also directed Jack Barrymore and Ronald Colman and James Stewart, to name a few.”

“From the director's point of view, it's infinitely easier to do violence than to do a good dramatic scene.”

“You can't have any successes unless you can accept failure.”

“It never occurred to me that I could live in California. Now I can't imagine living anywhere else.”

“You're just poor cornball provincial people, you critics; you just don't know what the hell you're talking about.”