Vincente Minnelli quotes:

I've worked with an awful lot of people. Katy Hepburn, Spencer Tracy.

West Side Story was terribly important because of the style of the dancing and the gangs of New York.

Dali was the great painter then and surrealism was a way of life.

I always liked the Van Gogh story because I was terribly involved in that.

The Pirate is surrealism and so, in a curious way, is Father of the Bride.

The Long, Long Trailer (1954) actually happened and the man wrote a book about it. Father of the Bride, same thing; a banker wrote that who had never written anything else.

But surrealism is present in most of my pictures.

If you want to learn how to sing, listen to Ella Fitzgerald.

But I went down to Venezuela and spend a few weeks going through jungles. It's fantastic looking.

Fortunately, John Houseman is a marvelous writer and he sat in on so many story conferences. He worked with Welles, you know, and he's a marvelous man.

Cedric Gibbons was the grand cardinal of the art department.

American films are terribly popular all over the world and American movie stars are terribly important. I don't know why.

Color can do anything that black-and-white can.

I allow an area for improvisation because the chemical things actors bring to stories make it not work.

In the Thirties, when I was in New York, I did the first surrealistic ballet in a show of mine.

Designing Woman was written for the screen.

I see wonderful films by Bertolucci, Visconti, and Fellini.

I always have coffee without sugar, you know. Just cream.

But I think musicals are going to have to deal with important subjects.

I learn new things all the time.

Once you find the right idea, then go ahead and embellish it.

If anybody reads a story in a magazine or book, different pictures compete in their minds.

I feel that a picture that stays with you is made up of a hundred or more hidden things. They're things that the audience is not conscious of, but that accumulate.

I had given up the theater and everything propelled me into entertainment. And I didn't resist it.

I seem to be drawn to things that actually happen.

I started out to be a painter and was born into the theater.

I use colors to bring fine points of story and character.

It's always the story that interests me.

It's the story that counts.

No, I only like whether I like the story or not, essentially see something in it that isn't completely there.