Satyajit Ray

“I've made seventeen or eighteen films now, only two of which have been original screenplays, all the others have been based on short stories or novels, and I find the long short story ideal for adaptation.”

“When I write an original story I write about people I know first-hand and situations I'm familiar with. I don't write stories about the nineteenth century.”

“The only solutions that are ever worth anything are the solutions that people find themselves.”

“You cannot go beyond a certain limit in your expenditure if you want to bring back money from your local market, which is very small after Pakistan.”

“What is attempted in these film is of course a synthesis. But it can be seen by someone who has his feet in both cultures. Someone who will bring to bear on the films involvement and detachment in equal measure.”

“I don't start a film with the heroine but with the cinema subject. If there is a woman in the story, she has to be of a particular type. It's not as if I start with Madhuri Dixit and then think what kind of film.”

“My cameraman and I devised a method, which we started using from my second film, which applies mainly to day scenes shot in the studio, where we used bounced light instead of direct light. We agreed with this thing of four or five shadows following the actors is dreadful.”