Top 35 Abel Ferrara Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

2. “The last day of your life is still going to be a day.”

— Abel Ferrara

3. “I don’t have a problem with Werner Herzog.”

— Abel Ferrara

4. “In the film business, it’s basically honor among thieves.”

— Abel Ferrara

5. “No one can stop me from talking about my movie.”

— Abel Ferrara

6. “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

7. “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

8. “I’m not a big fan of talking about dying. And then I make a movie where I kill everybody.”

— Abel Ferrara

9. “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

10. “Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting.”

— Abel Ferrara

11. “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

12. “There’s a difference between the world ending tomorrow and just drinking and drugging yourself to death.”

— Abel Ferrara

13. “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

14. “I don’t know what DVD commentaries are about. I’d like to strangle the person who came up with that concept.”

— Abel Ferrara

15. “That’s the thing about making a movie: You never finish editing. They just take it away from you.”

— Abel Ferrara

16. “Life is what happens when you’re doing other things, right?”

— Abel Ferrara

17. “I don’t need to push myself. I don’t need to sharpen my own knife and slit my throat. I’m trying to chill it and find an equilibrium and a balance to my work.”

— Abel Ferrara

18. “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

19. “Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want.”

— Abel Ferrara

20. “Making money is not gonna change anything about what I am, except I won’t answer the door.”

— Abel Ferrara

21. “Movies are only the result of where we are as human beings.”

— Abel Ferrara

22. “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

23. “I come from a world where you get the film done, that’s a success.”

— Abel Ferrara

24. “A script is not a piece of literature it’s a process.”

— Abel Ferrara

25. “I’m about my characters.”

— Abel Ferrara

26. “I was born in the Bronx, and then my father moved us to the country at an early age.”

— Abel Ferrara

27. “I grew up in the Bronx. I’m into rap music.”

— Abel Ferrara

28. “I’m in a house where if the washing machine shuts off, it sings a song. If iPad gets a message, it sings a song. I’m living in a real postmodern time – every single thing sings to you to tell you it’s started, it’s stopped, you’ve got a message, you didn’t get a message...”

— Abel Ferrara

29. “I’m a lapsed Buddhist like I’m a lapsed Catholic. I take it to a point.”

— Abel Ferrara

30. “As barbaric is we are, it’s a miracle we haven’t blown ourselves off the face of the earth so far.”

— Abel Ferrara

31. “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

32. “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

33. “The actors that I love to work with, they’re hard on me. They’re pushing me.”

— Abel Ferrara

34. “A lifetime isn’t long enough to learn how to make films.”

— Abel Ferrara

35. “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

36. “I don’t care if I get $50 million to do a film.”

— Abel Ferrara

37. “I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.”

— Abel Ferrara

38. “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

39. “But I’m never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is. The limits of my imagination is the only thing that’s gonna stop me.”

— Abel Ferrara