Quotes By Kathryn Bigelow

Character and emotionality don't always have to be relegated to quieter, more simple constructs.

One of the elements in the film that really fascinated me was not to look at the world in bi-polar terms of us vs them or east vs west, which was a by-product of the Cold War.

I began to exercise a lot of cinematic muscle with the precepts I had learned in the New York art world. Film was intriguing. I began to think of art as elitist; film was not.

The urge to purge the material I come up with is, I guess, an ongoing process.

Something becomes personal when it deviates from the norm.

I thrive on production. It feels very much like a natural environment for me.

I can't stand outside myself and be anybody else.

If there's specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can't change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies.

The Communist regime didn't consider this to be a shining moment in history and assigned no heroism to it. They classified it as merely an accident.

Jordan is a very secular, Westernized country in some respects.

My interest is to work in as uncompromised a way as possible.

For some individuals - some soldiers, some contractors - combat provides a kind of purpose and meaning beyond which all else potentially pales in comparison.

I don't do what I do to try and break a glass ceiling.

One should make morals judgements for oneself.

Perhaps the only thing in my favor is that I am very tenacious. I don't take 'no' very well.

On the other hand, I believe there's hope, because the breakdown and the repair are happening simultaneously.

War's dirty little secret is that some men love it.

Whereas painting is a more rarefied art form, with a limited audience, I recognized film as this extraordinary social tool that could reach tremendous numbers of people.

I think violence in a cinematic context can be, if handled in a certain way, very seductive.

Cinema has the capacity to be so physiological.

I don't believe in censorship in any form.

It's totally thrilling to direct.

I like to be strong.

I did a pilot for Anything But Love in 1988 that didn't sell.

You only have so much money to shoot a movie with.

I realised that there's a more muscular approach to film-making that I found very inspiring.

Am I a 'woman of action'? I don't think of myself that way.

There's really no difference between what I do and what a male filmmaker might do. I mean we all try to make our days, we all try to give the best performances we can, we try to make our budget, we try to make the best movie we possibly can.

I choose material instinctually - at the heart of it are characters that I feel are fresh and original, and allow for an opportunity to, I suppose, explore uncharted ground.

My movement from painting to film was a very conscious one.