"The best advice I can give has little to do with actual writing; it has to do with thinking about people. I recommend that you practice creating fictional characters by trying to describe, privately, the people in your life. See if you can describe their characters without being so general that they could be anyone. Then check back in a few months. If your description has radically changed, you have a ways to go. You aren’t yet seeing other people as fully fleshed out others, but are mired in your own relationships with them. When you can describe people in ways that are both meaningful and consistent and survive the vicissitudes of your moods, then you know you’re getting somewhere."

"Cinema is important — basically every art form comes to cinema. It involves music. Painting. Everything. It’s the closest we can come to life. A painting can only give you so much, I think. And music is very beautiful, but when they all come together…you’re really embracing everything. I don’t think some people realize, actually, how important it is."

"I am a child of cinema, and I am a cineaste, so everything I do is a reference to something I’ve heard or experienced or seen. And… we all do it, we all steal. The ones who claim they don’t, are obviously lying, because you do. You just have to make it your own."

"I think the best plot is no apparent plot. I like a slow start, the start gets under the audience’s skin and involves them so that they can appreciate grace notes and soft tones and don’t have to be pounded over the head with plot points and suspense hooks."

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Most Tarantino-isms aren’t printable in a family blog, but there is one phrase that Quentin Tarantino apparently says on his sets, as Stacey Sher, his longtime producer, revealed on the red carpet.

It’s such a Pollyanna-ish moment that it’s hard to believe it really happens anywhere near Mr. Tarantino, but Kerry Washington, a star of “Django Unchained,” seconded it. After a shot is finished, she explained, “He always says: ‘That was great, but we’re going to do it again. Why?’

Then everybody chants, “‘Because we love making movies!’”

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"This is about the truth and it should be respected as such because this is how I’m able speak to you; part of my family had to go through that and over 25 million African Americans had to go through that, too. So to turn one’s back on it is to turn your back on how people came to exist in America. We don’t turn our backs on Holocaust survivors and it would be indecent to do so. This is about the truth, that’s all. Plain and simple."

"David Lynch is not widely considered to be a horror director. He’s generally categorized as an art-film director, a surrealist. His movies capture the lyricism and the bizarre, vague symbolism to be found otherwise only in dreams. But when you’re dreaming, it’s not always a restful experience. Sometimes your dreams are more like nightmares. And few directors are as effective at conjuring the experience of nightmares onscreen as David Lynch is."

"I enrolled in NYU film school and went there for literally two days. I walked into this class and the teacher said, ‘If anyone is here to write Terminator 2, walk out the door.’ And I thought, well, that is not a good way to start. What if I want to write Terminator 2? What if someone sitting next to me wants to write it? But he was instantly saying, ‘We write serious films here.’ But Terminator 2 is a pretty awesome movie."