Explore Quotes by Dario Argento

I make a film - and once I've made it, everyone comes along and says 'Ah! This is a film that's political, or social', or whatever. But I'm not telling the story that they see. I made a film, told a story, but I wasn't thinking about exactly what it all meant.

Americans are very enthusiastic. We have a new generation of moviegoers who love great horror films. I am a very imaginative man, and for me, it's easy to speak with my dark side. I have very beautiful, interesting nightmares.

For a long time, censors have been cutting my works. This makes me so sad, because many times they will tell me, 'Television won't like, so we have to cut, cut, cut!'

I don't like landscapes. I like cities. Lots of cities. I like buildings. I like streets.

I was very young, and I was on vacation with my family, and there was a retrospective of old films, and one of them was 'The Phantom of the Opera' with Claude Rains that was in color. It was something very important for my career because I began to follow these stories that were morbid.

I think the camera was always my obsession, the camera movements. Because for me it's the most important thing in the move, the camera, because without the camera, film is just a stage or television - nothing.

Horror by definition is the emotion of pure revulsion. Terror of the same standard, is that of fearful anticipation.

Paradise is too perfect for humanity.

I've never gone into analysis. But Freud opened a door, I know.

The process of writing and directing drives you to such extremes that it's natural to feel an affinity with insanity. I approach that madness as something dangerous, and I'm afraid, but also I want to go to it, to see what's there, to embrace it. I don't know why, but I'm drawn.

You must push everything to the absolute limit or else life will be boring. People will be boring.

I first came to cinema as a passionate filmgoer, when I was a child. Then, when I was a very young man, I became a film critic precisely because of my knowledge of cinema. I did better than others because of this. Then I moved on to screenwriting. I wrote a film with Sergio Leone, 'Once Upon a Time in the West.' And then I moved to directing.

We had many good directors - John Carpenter, Brian De Palma - but things have become polluted by business, money and bad relationships. The success of the horror genre has led to its downfall.

I'm appreciated more abroad. In America, Japan... and in the United Kingdom.

Shooting movies has changed, and me too - I have changed. And then, every film I do, something in my mind, my soul, changes. My natural change, I change at the same time as the films, I think.

This is my life - I want to tell stories. There is something huge inside me that pushes me to tell stories, and tell stories for an audience and everybody.

I'm Dario Argento, and my style is something recognizable I think by the audience.

Then I realized my early work did have something special that audiences adored apart from what I humbly thought about them. They occupy a distinguished niche in Italian film history and probably always will.

The psychiatrists examine you and ask you about your life and work, and then they decide whether your film can be shown or not. It's a horrible experience.

In each of my characters there is a little of me. Not strictly autobiographical but a little piece of my soul.

To try and raise a budget for a film that is strictly for adults and both strong and graphic in content is not easy, especially when there is pressure to spend serious money on good special effects.