A biography for Michael Ciminohasn’t been written yet.
“I've published a couple of short novels in France that I didn't want to publish in English because I loved the characters too much to subject them to American critics who were not exactly favorable toward my work.”
“Journalism is not writing.”
“When the rich kids got together, the most we ever did was cross against a red light.”
“Movie-making ain't for sissies.”
“I don't make movies to make a point; I make movies to tell stories about people.”
“On a movie, you often work fourteen-, sixteen-hour days, six days a week, for six months. It is so easy to let up because of fatigue.”
“Most people I knew had been crippled by their educations. Some were even dying spiritually.”
“I'm a frustrated would-be architect who stumbled into the would-be business of making movies.”
“Friendship and sentiment and the giving of one's words are very important.”
“I don't dispute the accounts of My Lai 4, but I think that anyone who is a student of the war, or anyone who was there, would agree that anything you could imagine happening probably happened.”
“All of those years, I felt like 'Heaven's Gate' was a beautiful, fantastically colored balloon tied to a string fastened to my wrist, so the balloon could never fly.”
“Hollywood has always been crazy. It's controlled anarchy. But how can you loathe something that has given you so much?”
“A film maker's energy and creativity don't have to end when he turns over his film.”
“You couldn't make 'Heaven's Gate' today. Even were you to quadruple the resources to make the movie, you couldn't make it because the people don't exist.”
“You can't look back.”
“I wouldn't look pretty as a woman.”
“I was a child prodigy. Like Michelangelo, who could draw a perfect circle at age five. I was extremely gifted. I could paint a perfect portrait of someone at age five.”
“When a guy is perceived as macho, female editors aren't going to like it - because they all want to be men.”
“Would you ask Picasso to explain 'Guernica?' Would you ask Nabokov to explain 'Lolita?' Would you ask Tolstoy about 'War and Peace?' No, you wouldn't dare.”
“Every good war film, if you want to use that phrase - I don't think it's a good phrase, but if you want to use that phrase - every good film, a first-rate film about war, is an anti-war movie.”