Takeshi Kitano quotes:

I always come to conclusions very fast. Well, that is one way of thinking, and the other way would be that I lack the necessary perseverance to stick to one thing that really fits me. I don't know if it's a good thing or bad thing.

I thought maybe I could become like the next Van Gogh. I bought a sunflower and painted it, and it looked like the work of a 6-year-old.

Humour is like violence. They both come to you unexpectedly, and the more unpredictable they both are, the better it gets.

I intentionally shoot violence to make the audience feel real pain. I have never and I will never shoot violence as if it's some kind of action video game.

Sword fighting in film is not about how good the fighter is, but how good the actor receiving the blows is.

The thing about art for me is that you can go on theorising your work forever, because it's open to interpretation.

My film directorial career has been nothing but repetition of one failure after another!

The film is ambiguous, an ambiguity that reflects on Japan today, and a world in which nothing is clear. Once I made the film, I realized it was about this feeling of vague disquiet in Japan and in the rest of the world, a feeling that is gaining on us, getting less vague.

I don't really expect much from my life. So when I heard my films are premiering in film festival circuits I was glad of course but I thought it was lucky accident.

For me comedy and violence has a lot in common. Just as you expect, comedy always lurks behind the most unexpected of circumstances.

I paint for the sheer joy of painting. I have never sold any of my paintings. I'd rather give them to people for free.

I do all these various activities like painting and writing, comedy and films probably because not that I'm good at everything but because I'm not good at any of these things.

When people tell me I'm an artist, I say, 'What?' It's impossible for me to take the idea seriously.

One thing I hate in movies is when the camera starts circling around the characters. I find that totally fake."

One thing I hate in movies is when the camera starts circling around the characters. I find that totally fake.

I believe you shouldn't force the audience's interpretation of a character or a story. The more you explain things, the less intriguing and imaginable they are for viewers. . . . Film to me, in its essence, in its ultimate nature, is silent. Music and dialogue are there to fill what is lacking in the image. But you should be able to tell the story with moving pictures alone. For my next project, though, I'd like to make the kind of film where the characters blabber all the time.