Top 50 Baz Luhrmann Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Trust yourself that you can do it and get it.”

— Baz Luhrmann

2. “A life lived in fear is a life half lived.”

— Baz Luhrmann

Featured in: Overcoming Fear Quotes

3. “The race is long but in the end it is only with YOURSELF...”

— Baz Luhrmann

4. “Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.”

— Baz Luhrmann

5. “Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you wanna do with your life; the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives; some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.”

— Baz Luhrmann

6. “I wish I’d done everything on Earth with you.”

— Baz Luhrmann

7. “Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it.”

— Baz Luhrmann

8. “Why live life from dream to dream? And dread the day when dreaming ends.”

— Baz Luhrmann

9. “Whatever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.”

— Baz Luhrmann

10. “Australia, to the rest of the world, is just far away, and Australia in the Thirties was the faraway of the faraway.”

— Baz Luhrmann

11. “Ultimately, you have to pursue your own path, not someone’s idea of the right path. You need to stay on your path.”

— Baz Luhrmann

12. “The ugly duckling is a misunderstood universal myth. It’s not about turning into a blonde Barbie doll or becoming what you dream of being; it’s about self-revelation, becoming who you are.”

— Baz Luhrmann

13. “Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings, they’re your best link to your past. And the people most likely to stick with you in the future.”

— Baz Luhrmann

14. “Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you’ll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out.”

— Baz Luhrmann

15. “I always have a point of view. It may not be right, but it’s my own.”

— Baz Luhrmann

16. “Worrying about the future is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life will always be things that never crossed your worried mind.”

— Baz Luhrmann

17. “Sydney in general is eclectic. You can be on that brilliant blue ocean walk in the morning and then within 20 minutes you can be in a completely vast suburban sprawl or an Italian or Asian suburb, and it’s that mix of people, it’s that melting pot of people that give it its vital personality.”

— Baz Luhrmann

18. “Advice is a form of nostalgia.”

— Baz Luhrmann

19. “The food in Sydney is an Asian Pacific cuisine. It’s eclectic but above all it’s fresh, inventive and creative and that’s what I love about it.”

— Baz Luhrmann

20. “When you’re in theater or the circus or film – to me it’s all one – affairs happen. People fall in love.”

— Baz Luhrmann

21. “So, what is creative freedom? We can make what we want, how we want. The only constraint is: not for any budget.”

— Baz Luhrmann

22. “I grew up around jazz. I love jazz.”

— Baz Luhrmann

23. “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

— Baz Luhrmann

24. “I mean the future has become old fashioned.”

— Baz Luhrmann

25. “I feel funny about owning art. I don’t really want to say: ‘Wow, come and see my Monet – it’s in a dark room at the bottom of my cellar.’”

— Baz Luhrmann

26. “Understand that friends come and go. But a precious few, who should hold on.”

— Baz Luhrmann

27. “If Paris is a city of lights, Sydney is the city of fireworks.”

— Baz Luhrmann

28. “Accept certain inalienable truths.”

— Baz Luhrmann

29. “In the ’60s not everybody was wearing flowers in their hair and flowing caftans.”

— Baz Luhrmann

30. “I think dance in any culture, in any form, is a true leveler.”

— Baz Luhrmann

31. “My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education – from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic.”

— Baz Luhrmann

32. “All good, clean stories are melodrama; it’s just the set of devices that determines how you show or hide it.”

— Baz Luhrmann

33. “In the ’80s, everyone wanted to be in opera. It was groovy.”

— Baz Luhrmann

34. “One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I’ve seen it three times, is Bondarchuk’s ‘War and Peace.’ Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era.”

— Baz Luhrmann

35. “I’ve always loved the old epics that tell a simple emotional story, whether it’s the tumultuous relationship between Rhett and Scarlett or Lawrence of Arabia’s passion to get lost in a faraway place.”

— Baz Luhrmann

36. “One of the great things about Sydney is that it has a great acceptance of everyone and everything. It’s an incredibly tolerant city, a city with a huge multicultural basis.”

— Baz Luhrmann

37. “I don’t have fights with actors. In absolute honesty, I’ve never fought with any actor ever.”

— Baz Luhrmann

38. “Fitzgerald coined the phrase the ‘Jazz Age,’ and now we’re living in the Hip-Hop Age.”

— Baz Luhrmann

39. “Some of the greatest relationship films of all time, the two stars have hated each other, but mostly you see that chemistry.”

— Baz Luhrmann

40. “My gift is my song.”

— Baz Luhrmann

41. “Everything I make starts very personally.”

— Baz Luhrmann

42. “You really think that on my films people tell me what to do? I don’t think so. On my films I decide.”

— Baz Luhrmann

43. “I feel a kinship with anyone who feels that their road, their life or who they really are is not good enough. I really relate to that.”

— Baz Luhrmann

44. “Western films don’t do very well in India.”

— Baz Luhrmann

45. “I really believe musical form will go on. There’s got to be a way of making musical form in cinema live again.”

— Baz Luhrmann

46. “When I was growing up you would see big American films that really mythologised their landscape, that really showed the vastness and the drama of their country.”

— Baz Luhrmann

47. “I feel like a member of any group comprised of outsiders.”

— Baz Luhrmann

48. “Look, I had a passion for comic books growing up.”

— Baz Luhrmann

49. “Hurt him. Hurt him and save him.”

— Baz Luhrmann

50. “At a very young age I was allowed to go into the cinema and watch adult films.”

— Baz Luhrmann