Harmony Korine

“If Wagner lived today, he would probably work with film instead of music. He already knew back then that the Great Art Form would include a sort of fourth dimension; it was really film he was talking about.”

“Skateboarding was everything to us growing up. It changes the way you see the world: you spend all day looking for ditches.”

“I'm not a video brat. I don't derive all my inspiration through movies. I get it from a lot of other places, too.”

“I was born 'Harmony,' and it was weird because when I was a little kid, I was picked on so much that when I was 13, I changed my name to Harmful. I thought it was a tougher name, so I had it legally changed. And then, I don't know, it just didn't seem to catch on, so... legally, my name is still Harmful, but I just said I'll go back to Harmony.”

“I never cared about making one coherent masterpiece with a conventional narrative. I always wanted my movies to have images falling from all directions in a vaudevillian way. If you didn't like what was happening in one scene, you could just snooze through it until the next scene.”

“You can still make music that people love, but there won't be more innovation. I started listening to electronic music a long time ago. But mostly I listen to rap. I think rap is the most interesting.”

“I have a pretty good family. But ever since I was little, I just felt like I wanted to be on my own. It was the same thing about school.”

“I was free when I was 12 because I got my first skateboard. I've been free ever since.”

“When I had my first camera - I was a child of the '80s. I remember what it was like reusing the same tapes over and over again, and having really bad quality and images kind of bubbling up from under the surface.”

“I look at WorldstarHipHop in the morning, Bossip, Global Grind, and everything in between, but it's all so quick, I don't even think about it. And I've never been a fan of lyrical or socially conscious rap music.”

“What I remember myself from films, and what I love about films, is specific scenes and characters.”

“A scientist shouldn't be asked to judge the economic and moral value of his work. All we should ask the scientist to do is find the truth and then not keep it from anyone.”

“My knock with filmmaking is the whole bureaucracy around it, so in some ways, staying outside of it is easier for me.”

“I don't make movies for the same reason that a lot of people do. I make films because I need to see them exist in a very specific way.”

“I always try to make films in such a way that it's hard to imagine how they came to be, or where they came from.”

“I've started lots of books, but it's hard for me to finish them.”

“I had a guidance counsellor who made me take an aptitude test, and told me I should be a bricklayer.”

“I've always liked street lights, and I've always photographed them. I probably have a collection of two to three thousand photographs of them, just around the city, mainly at night.”

“Cinema sustains life. It captures death in its progress.”

“I don't even know how people read new fiction anymore because there's so much old fiction that exists that seems great that's unread. It's overwhelming to me. But, I mean, I do read. But there probably haven't been many people less literate than me that have been in 'The Paris Review.'”