Quotes By Abel Ferrara

In the film business, it's basically honor among thieves.

The actors that I love to work with, they're hard on me. They're pushing me.

I'm about my characters.

But I'm never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is. The limits of my imagination is the only thing that's gonna stop me.

Making money is not gonna change anything about what I am, except I won't answer the door.

No one can stop me from talking about my movie.

Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting.

That's the thing about making a movie: You never finish editing. They just take it away from you.

I was born in the Bronx, and then my father moved us to the country at an early age.

The secret is not to make a film that causes something like Virginia Tech to happen. The secret is to make a film that stops it happening.

I don't know what DVD commentaries are about. I'd like to strangle the person who came up with that concept.

Where I come from you're not raised to think on your own. It's not that you're pushed to read the Bible. The Bible is read to you.

I don't care if I get $50m to do a film.

My existence is about making movies, so I've just got to rock and roll with the punches. You want to make movies on telephones, I'm there.

With 'New Rose Hotel,' I knew that I was getting paid a $100,000 fee to write, produce, and direct, and that's all I was going to get.

I'm not a big fan of talking about dying. And then I make a movie where I kill everybody.

As barbaric is we are, it's a miracle we haven't blown ourselves off the face of the earth so far.

Mulberry Street was the beating heart of the Italian-American experience, but you don't find those gangsters now. I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

My life is proof that I don't need you to do what I do. If there's no one to see it, I'll watch it.

I grew up in the '60s, which was a creative time, so it wasn't that big of a stretch to go from a baseball bat to a guitar to a film camera.

A script is not a piece of literature it's a process.

I don't care if I get $50 million to do a film.

The more you get into any religion, it becomes the same. It really becomes how you treat other people and how you get outside yourself. How you look to help other people, and how you get out of this 'I, me, mine' type of thing.

Certain actors wanna get paid, they think working in a low-budget movie is being ripped off. But for others it's like, 'Yes, let's do it.'

I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself. You're taught not to think too deeply about things.

I'm a lapsed Buddhist like I'm a lapsed Catholic. I take it to a point.

It's funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it's fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

It's only Western civilization that, God forbid, you talk about dying, when it's the only thing we know for certain, right? Everyone's going to die, so what's the big problem? 'Oh, God. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it.' I mean, I'm one of them. I'm not a big fan of talking about dying.

There's no such thing as a non-final cut director.

Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want.