Top 35 Alfonso Cuaron Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Technology is technology. It is not inherently good or bad. Technologies are tools.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

2. “Learn from your experience shooting your film, and then move on to the next.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

3. “As a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. And my own passion was that I wanted to be a film director. I realized that being an astronaut was not going to be an option, so I said, “Well, I’m going to be a director and do films in space.””

— Alfonso Cuaron

4. “Story is important but the most important is the theme and how you’re going to convey theme cinematically. I’m a believer also.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

5. “If I would rescue one of my movies, it would be ‘A Little Princess.’”

— Alfonso Cuaron

6. “The two real leads in ‘Children of Men’ are Clive Owen and the social environment. You know, this same movie without the social environment maybe is just like a generic chase movie.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

7. “I’m interested in new worlds, new universes, new challenges. I always said the only reason to make a film is not for the result but for what you learn for the next one.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

8. “We’re born first humans then after they stamp our passport.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

9. “I really believe there is the possibility of something great that can happen in the right hands.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

10. “I produce the way I would love to be produced: In ways to create the best conditions to make your movie, but also to create a space in which the director calls the shots.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

11. “I have this thing that, once I finish a movie, I never see it again.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

12. “The great thing about the moon landing is that my grandmother got the first color TV in order to be able to see the moon landing that was in black and white.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

13. “I guess I have a short attention span! I’m interested in new worlds, new universes, new challenges.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

14. “I have to confess that I don’t read much of what is written about me.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

15. “My mom, she was, she studied chemistry. And later on she changed and majored, she changed later in her career, in her life and studied philosophy and then she did a perfect clash, connection between chemistry and philosophy and she became a witch.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

16. “Every film is difficult. Making films, you’re always going to have problems, there’s always going to be challenges.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

17. “I learned there’s an amazing unexplored territory in terms of narrative. Before, I thought the unexplored territory was the form, the way you shoot a movie. Now, I’m learning about the beautiful marriage between form and narrative.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

18. “The only reason you make a movie is not to make or set out to do a good or a bad movie, it’s just to see what you learn for the next one.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

19. “The long takes process doesn’t allow for that many takes. In the past I have shot over 50 takes of different shots. Sometimes you end up using take 64, sometimes take four.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

20. “You have to be very focused about the music that you have inside.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

21. “What’s the point of being an Australian guy traveling through India if you are going to go to India to meet other Australians?”

— Alfonso Cuaron

22. “The amazing thing is that the more money it takes for a movie to get made, the more you feel like everybody wants you to fail.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

23. “Style is just an impression. Style itself is hollow. Style, its ok style as long as it is part of a language. Style for style itself is just something very hollow.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

24. “I used to be very controlling with visuals and editing, and I would pretty much craft the performances; now I have learned to trust the material and the actors.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

25. “I find it very stupid that teenagers could only see caricatures of teenagers but they couldn’t see films that you try to be a truthful context, a truthful portrayal of teenagers.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

26. “There is a certain thing that you have to just stick to the plan, stick to what you want to do, and you try to work with studios and executives that they get it.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

27. “I think it’s always important to give immediate positive reinforcement.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

28. “As a director, you’re only as good as your collaborators. You surround with collaborators that are going to understand what you’re trying to do. Not only that, they’re going to push and fight for what you’re trying to do.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

29. “Cautionary tales were fantastic in the ’70s.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

30. “I think it is something that is so important, to be very aware of the direction in which the 21st century is going with all this blind faith in democracy. And by the way, I am not against democracy – I am against the blind faith that is being put in democracy.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

31. “I have to say, ‘Gravity’ is better in 3-D, even though in 2-D the quality of the picture is better. But the 3-D is better.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

32. “Historically, there is a fight between the sound designer and the composer. You see them in the mixing room and they’re always fighting because the composer wants the music to be heard and the sound designer wants the sound to be heard.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

33. “I have my misgivings about 3-D. I don’t like the lack of blacks and whites, how it dulls the image, how the color gets corrupted. I don’t necessarily like the experience of having heavy glasses in front of me.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

34. “I left Mexico for artistic survival. If I had stayed, I would have been forced by the government, who control the movie business, to direct TV shows or commercials or infomercials for the government.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

35. “A lot of the films I like are more than fantasies – they’re movies fascinated by the technology of space exploration, and they try to honor the laws of physics. I watched the Gregory Peck movie ‘Marooned’ over and over when I was a kid.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

36. “When you work with kids, people tell you to be very delicate, but that’s the last thing you should do with kids. They feel patronized if you’re like that. They just want you to be normal.”

— Alfonso Cuaron

37. “The most important thematics in humanity I think that are completely universal and completely relatable from one person to the other. As long as, one more time going to back to the thematic, as long as you’re truthful to that thematic, you can trust that that is going to transcend.”

— Alfonso Cuaron