Epiphany Quotes

Woody (Woody Allen) makes a movie as if he were lighting 10,000 safety matches to illuminate a city. Each one is a little epiphany: topical, ethnic or political.

I had an epiphany a few years ago where I was out at a celebrity party and it suddenly dawned on me that I had yet to meet a celebrity who is as smart and interesting as any of my friends.

Well, a sort of epiphany: I was in a great band. And it`s very cool to be at 53 and realise that when you were a kid you were in a great band.

(Thoughts on the one film (or films) that made him want to become a filmmaker and why): There was no epiphany from one film. There were a few that stood out over the years. I was 8 when I saw _Ladri di biciclette (1948)_, and it was the first black-and-white film I had ever seen. It triggered my curiosity to start seeing European cinema. When I was 7, I saw The Making of `Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid` (1970). Hearing George Roy Hill talk about all the choices he made, I knew that directing movies was what I wanted to do. I remember seeing Death and Venice 40 times one year, and then switching my allegiance to Godard after seeing Masculine/Feminine! I knew early on that I was a nerd and that films were my refuge. Those first few minutes before the lights went off, and you`re alone in the theater waiting, were really pleasurable. Whether it was Steve McQueen, the coolest guy in cinema, to Robert Altman`s strange and wonderful 3 Women (1977), I saw hundreds of films before I ever picked up a camera. I believe I took something away from each one.

An artist`s duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.

I was sitting in the looping studio late one night, and I had this epiphany that they weren`t paying me for my acting, for God`s sake, but to own me. And from then on, it became clear and an awful lot easier to deal with.

A friend of mine who was a founding father of the Church of Satan, who later I compared notes with, said when he was a kid, he too managed to get into Sally`s Nude Ranch, and in the corral he saw his Sunday school teacher!!! That was a real epiphany for him. From that moment on he was a Satanist.