J. C. Chandor quotes:

I had decent but not great grades in high school because I was highly motivated in some subjects, like the arts, drama, English, and history, but in math and science I was a screw-up. Wooster saw something in me, and I really flourished there. I got into theatre, took photography and painting classes.

I grew up in suburban New York City and London, England, where my dad was working.

The original Spencer Tracy version of 'The Old Man and the Sea' was always terribly flawed because of the over-reliance on voice over, but it's still a beautiful movie.

As a writer, I had learned a lot on 'Margin Call' about embracing the weaknesses of a narrative and of a project. A story always has an inherent narrative weakness.

I wrote 'All is Lost' while editing 'Margin Call'. I did that long before I knew if I was ever going to get to make another movie.

I'm a huge fan of the films of the '70s and even into the '80s, Sidney Lumet, all those films that used what was going on in people's lives as drama. And not only are you entertained, but hopefully have a greater understanding of your world coming out of it.

I had a caricature view of the guy in the beret with the big megaphone, but a movie director and writer was beyond my role of understanding.

When I'm writing a movie, it's usually pretty close to what the movie is going to be, which is just a luxury of being a writer-director.

Just making a movie the way 'All is Lost' had to be made was a great experience, because it was structured differently than any other film I will make for the rest of my life.

I did not grow up a cinefile. No one in my family was in the film business or even anything close to it.

I don't know how you make decisions in your life, but I weigh lots of things, and it's not always the purest of things for why I take a job or do this. I always try to think of the many different factors in my life, and not one is pure greed. One is pure quality of life.

We print money. The people that print the money is actually us. The government of the United States of America. By its very nature, we control that, and this system is there as representation of us.

There is certainly a part of my filmmaking that harkens to a more simpler commercial kind of taste, but then with this there's certainly a kind of avant-garde, abstract, existential element to it.

When it feels scary to jump, that's exactly when you jump. Otherwise you end up staying the same place your whole life. And that I can't do.

When I have people around, I'm a chatterbox. But when I'm alone, I never speak. I don't talk to myself; it's just not my schtick.

There is certainly a part of my filmmaking that harkens to a more simpler commercial kind of taste, but then with this theres certainly a kind of avant-garde, abstract, existential element to it.

When you're on a boat, it is this tiny little island where you have to be completely self-sufficient.

I think my films kind of walk this line that Im proud of, that they feel sort of like films of my youth, which were far more commercial.

I consider myself somewhat spiritual, but not practicing.