Sam Mendes quotes:

Directing Skyfall was one of the best experiences of my professional life, but I have theatre and other commitments, including productions of Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and King Lear, that need my complete focus over the next year and beyond.

I think with Blair Witch and The Sixth Sense, people are much more open to something that is different.

Thank God I don't live in Los Angeles. I think if you're there the whole time it just gets out of proportion and you lose touch completely with reality.

Listen, you make a big movie, you're going into the Coliseum, and people are going to give you the thumbs up or the thumbs down. And that's part of the game. It's part of the fun as well.

Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.

This is the first time in 10 years I don't know what I'm doing next, and I'm rather enjoying it. Soon I'll be climbing the walls no doubt, but right now, it's not clear, I'm just enjoying the freedom.

The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words.

Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.

The perceived wisdom is that people do not go in large numbers to black-and-white movies anymore - which is a great shame, but I'd love to make a black-and-white movie one day.

It took me a long time to film the plastic bag, and then I had to get the cut of the scene right. But if you find it as beautiful as the character does, then suddenly it becomes a different movie, and so did he as a character.

Now I'm back home, living in London, running my theater. I just want to enjoy all that.

It's a risk casting anyone against type or what they're known to do. But there's one thing better than having a great actor, which is having a great actor who's never done what you're asking him to do. He's hungry to get out of the trailer every day and hungry to test himself.

I feel like the American years were my apprenticeship for doing a Bond movie.

Shooting action is very, very meticulous, it's increments, tiny little pieces.

One of the reasons I loved working with Tom is people feel they know who he is... I think working with an actor who the audience already has a relationship with actually helps you in a film like this.

As a first-time director in America, I feel I've been very fortunate.

There's good and bad in everybody. I wasn't looking for the good, or looking for the bad. This is a man who signed his pact with the devil 20 years ago, and he's learned to live with it. He's tried to protect his family from it.

I want to inspire, and be inspired.

You've got to work. You've got to want an audience to sit forward in their chairs sometimes, rather than sit back and be bombarded with images.

Kevin and Annette... I wanted them to do it together. They clearly wanted to work with each other.

The joy of a road movie is its very simple narrative nature, which is that you know you're going to go through different places and you're going to meet new people. At the same time, you have to not make it feel too obvious and too crudely episodic.

Children make you confront your own childhood. Which I think is common. Suddenly you're remembering your own parents as parents, not to mention the fact that you're confronted by them as grandparents. So you also have that terrible shock, a mirror image of your own. You suddenly seem to be so helpless in the face of young children. And you think, "How did you ever bring up me?"

I wanted to keep exploring... I'm not about to choose a series of movies in which I can use the same bag of tricks and style that I used in the first film.

You're in the lap of the gods. If people go, they go, and if they don't.

I like throwing snowballs at small children.

Politicizing of kids starts with pregnancy, of course. You shouldn't be drinking wine. You can't be smoking, either. The poor woman is poked and prodded and touched and obsessed over.

When I drive through a field, I want to see green grass sometimes, and I don't want to see black and white.

I'm certainly getting a lot more mail... that's basically it.

You think about taking audiences on a journey.

I don't think good and evil are polarized.

You freeze with the number of opportunities given to you and just decide to do nothing at all.

One movie is only one movie. I want to have a lifetime of making films.

All I know is that I operate by going out to each of them and trying to learn the territory in which they operate. My language to each of them has to suit their brain.

Confidence is essential, but ego is not.

Every Bond is different and every generation needs a different Bond and it's been able to move with the times.

For me, certain shots or scenes are keys in the movie.

I am not a master-class director. I am not a teacher. I am a coach. I dont have a methodology. Each actor is different. And on the film set, you have to be next to them all.

I deliberately, in a way, went for something that was a huge challenge and was a big period film. I was excited about the canvas on which I could tell the story as much as the story itself.

I don't think of it as a competition - which might surprise you, given the way movies are reported constantly.

I still can't quite believe it. Although there was something about the fact that it was a first-time writer, a first-time producer, and a first-time director all at the same time.

I suppose once in a while, a filmmaker makes a movie that's more than just a sum of its parts, more than good acting or good filmmaking. It's something else that has nothing to do with what you've done. This is in 1999, made by people in 1999 for people in 1999 about people in 1999.

I think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.

I want to try and work in different genres with different types of actors, on small movies and big movies.

If you lived through the shooting of Jaws, you can live through anything.

If you're doing a classic play, where if you do a Chekhov, you do the words as written. You can't do that with a novel; you have to do your version of the words as written.

I've directed bits of action and so I know that it's long and it's very detailed. Editing action is a good deal more exciting than shooting action. Shooting action is very, very meticulous, it's increments, tiny little pieces.

I've made movies that cost less than one car chase.

I've made movies that cost less than one car chase. But that's part of the pleasure of doing it, pushing yourself in new directions.

Learn to say, "I don't know the answer." It could be the beginning of a very good day's rehearsal.

Now Im back home, living in London, running my theater. I just want to enjoy all that.

The characters are trapped within the lifestyle. It's about what goes on before the movie starts.

The importance of rehearsal is maybe you want to talk about how the scene's going to be designed, how it's going to be staged, all of those things. It's all about preparation, and deciding what mutually you don't want to do, rather than necessarily what you do.

The moment you have kids, you are prey to judgment, but you also become a judge. You find yourself going, "Can you believe what she did with such-and-such?" at school.

There have been screenwriters who I'm sure would gladly kill me, because I've been very fast and loose with their work, because I felt like it wasn't up to my high standards. I would push and pull it on set, and make changes all the time. But then when you're working with an original screenplay, my theater instincts kick in, and I suddenly become very keeper-of-the-words.

There's one thing better than having a great actor, and that's having a great actor who's never done this kind of role before and is hungry to do it. They're testing themselves every day. They want to get out of their trailer and get to work.

You just never know when movies are going to take off or not. The lucky thing about this was that it didn't cost a lot of money, and therefore there wasn't loads of pressure on me.

You've got to believe as a filmmaker that if a movie's good enough, it's going to survive; and if it's not, well, it won't.