The secret is not to make a film that causes something like Virginia Tech to happen. The secret is to make a film that stops it happening.
— Abel Ferrara
It's only Western civilization that, God forbid, you talk about dying, when it's the only thing we know for certain, right? Everyone's going to die, so what's the big problem? 'Oh, God. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it.' I mean, I'm one of them. I'm not a big fan of talking about dying.
— Abel Ferrara
Where I come from you're not raised to think on your own. It's not that you're pushed to read the Bible. The Bible is read to you.
— Abel Ferrara
Life is what happens when you're doing other things, right?
— Abel Ferrara
As an old-time New Yorker, it's not that I miss the '70s and '80s or whatever. I miss the fact that there was a certain kind of energy that exists when people can live for nothing.
— Abel Ferrara
There's no such thing as a non-final cut director.
— Abel Ferrara
I don't care if I get $50m to do a film.
— Abel Ferrara
With 'New Rose Hotel,' I knew that I was getting paid a $100,000 fee to write, produce, and direct, and that's all I was going to get.
— Abel Ferrara
The actors that I love to work with, they're hard on me. They're pushing me.
— Abel Ferrara
Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want.
— Abel Ferrara
It's funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it's fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.
— Abel Ferrara
In the film business, it's basically honor among thieves.
— Abel Ferrara
Even if you're a poet sitting in your room writing a poem, you're still in the world - although I guess being a poet is a different than having to deal with 40 or 50 people to raise a couple million bucks and all that bullshit.
— Abel Ferrara
I'm about my characters.
— Abel Ferrara
Certain actors wanna get paid, they think working in a low-budget movie is being ripped off. But for others it's like, 'Yes, let's do it.'
— Abel Ferrara
The world is constantly changing. You're constantly learning and you have to be willing to get off your mark, and get off your spot and take that knowledge you have not to fix yourself into a place but to keep going.
— Abel Ferrara
A script is not a piece of literature it's a process.
— Abel Ferrara
I don't know what DVD commentaries are about. I'd like to strangle the person who came up with that concept.
— Abel Ferrara
I'm a lapsed Buddhist like I'm a lapsed Catholic. I take it to a point.
— Abel Ferrara
My job is going to be to direct the film - I'm going to do it. And that's where my job ends.
— Abel Ferrara
I was born in the Bronx, and then my father moved us to the country at an early age.
— Abel Ferrara
My life is proof that I don't need you to do what I do. If there's no one to see it, I'll watch it.
— Abel Ferrara
I don't want to live anywhere where I'm breathing two million cars' fumes and paying a zillion dollars for the right to be totally hassled.
— Abel Ferrara
As barbaric is we are, it's a miracle we haven't blown ourselves off the face of the earth so far.
— Abel Ferrara
The more you get into any religion, it becomes the same. It really becomes how you treat other people and how you get outside yourself. How you look to help other people, and how you get out of this 'I, me, mine' type of thing.
— Abel Ferrara
I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself. You're taught not to think too deeply about things.
— Abel Ferrara
I direct, and I make movies I can't finance. I can't raise money. I can't sell anything. I make things.
— Abel Ferrara
That's the thing about making a movie: You never finish editing. They just take it away from you.
— Abel Ferrara
Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting
— Abel Ferrara
I come from a world where you get the film done, that's a success.
— Abel Ferrara
I grew up in the Bronx. I'm into rap music.
— Abel Ferrara
Movies are only the result of where we are as human beings.
— Abel Ferrara
When I talk about drugs and alcohol, I'm talking about sex addiction, gambling addiction, eating addiction, throwing-up addiction. I'm not talking about mental illness.
— Abel Ferrara
A lifetime isn't long enough to learn how to make films.
— Abel Ferrara
I'm not a big fan of talking about dying. And then I make a movie where I kill everybody.
— Abel Ferrara
I grew up in the '60s, which was a creative time, so it wasn't that big of a stretch to go from a baseball bat to a guitar to a film camera.
— Abel Ferrara
My existence is about making movies, so I've just got to rock and roll with the punches. You want to make movies on telephones, I'm there.
— Abel Ferrara
Mulberry Street was the beating heart of the Italian-American experience, but you don't find those gangsters now. I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.
— Abel Ferrara
There's a difference between the world ending tomorrow and just drinking and drugging yourself to death.
— Abel Ferrara
No one can stop me from talking about my movie.
— Abel Ferrara