Top 35 Neil Jordan Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Is it fair to have given us the memory of what was and the desire of what could be when we must suffer what is?”

— Neil Jordan

2. “Initially with The Butcher Boy, there was this kid growing up in this strange, weird environment that I remember from when I was a kid. And Patrick’s vision was so complete there.”

— Neil Jordan

3. “But everyone gets burnt, don’t they? Certain things are outside of your control. I suppose the only thing you can learn as a director is to not put yourself into situations where it can get outside of your control. And that’s what happened.”

— Neil Jordan

4. “The most difficult thing is the organization of people and the expression of your intentions. It’s very easy to have a picture in your head and to imagine that you’ve told everybody about what you need.”

— Neil Jordan

5. “The Company of Wolves is about how society teaches young women to look at themselves, and what to be afraid of. It’s about a girl learning that the world of sensuality and the unknown is not to be feared, that it’s worth getting your teeth into.”

— Neil Jordan

6. “For me, the filmmaking has to be about the dramaturgy.”

— Neil Jordan

7. “Nina felt an inordinate pleasure, a pleasure that seemed to creep up on her the way the mud oozed through her barefoot toes.”

— Neil Jordan

8. “Never make a promise – you may have to keep it.”

— Neil Jordan

9. “I’m less comfortable making American movies because I don’t know them so well.”

— Neil Jordan

10. “It’s hard to know whether certain characters come to life or not, they either come to have their own life or they don’t. I’ve written many things in which the characters just remain inert.”

— Neil Jordan

11. “Well, Company of Wolves was about that literally, about fairy tales.”

— Neil Jordan

12. “I had made a decision, although I hardly knew it yet. It’s often that way with decisions, they’re made in some hidden part of us and the awareness secretes itself slowly into that conscious part of us that imagines it decides.”

— Neil Jordan

13. “I can’t do a film if I don’t start with the writing.”

— Neil Jordan

14. “It’s the same thing in a way, although writing a book is a very solitary thing.”

— Neil Jordan

15. “I don’t think we have enough imaginary creatures in cinema. It seems like we’re stuck with zombies, vampires, and werewolves. We should have everything. We should have minotaurs. We should have elves. We should have mermen in popular culture. But instead we’ve stuck with vampires.”

— Neil Jordan

16. “I took two years away from making films to write a novel.”

— Neil Jordan

17. “My conception of it was that in a normal film you have a story with different movements that program, develop, go a little bit off the trunk, come back, and end.”

— Neil Jordan

18. “I’ve had three novels published, and I was working a little bit in theater in Ireland. I wrote one film script just to see what it would turn out like.”

— Neil Jordan

19. “It is extremely difficult to get movies that cost more than $40 million to be made these days.”

— Neil Jordan

20. “For me now, it’s about what you would write and what you wouldn’t write, and that’s how I select what I am going to do. It can be quite nice being brought a concept by a studio for me to work on.”

— Neil Jordan

21. “I hoped that grief was similar to the other emotions. That it would end, the way happiness did. Or laughter.”

— Neil Jordan

22. “It’s nice to work with Hollywood because there is never any question of resources put at your disposal to make a film as long as it is the right thing to do.”

— Neil Jordan

23. “The Company of Wolves doesn’t belong in any category, so it’s difficult to prepare an audience for it. It’s not a horror film, it’s not a fantasy film, it’s not a children’s film – so what is it?”

— Neil Jordan

24. “I mean I grew up in Ireland, so one would have to be consciously blinkered not to have reflected on the issue of political violence because that was the story since I was 19 years old or 20.”

— Neil Jordan

25. “Films have gotten leaner and leaner, cutting out all variations from the story line.”

— Neil Jordan

26. “When you’ve written a movie, you then get together with a whole lot of people and make it. In many ways, I think it is far nicer to be with people rather than being completely solitary.”

— Neil Jordan

27. “Well, I suppose I’m interested in ways of storytelling and in stories that are about storytelling.”

— Neil Jordan

28. “It’s the opposite journey from what I’ve usually done with films. I find it very easy to go from, say, a lit, pleasurable environment, like what you see outside there, to a very dark place. But the opposite journey, which is what this movie takes, is much more complicated.”

— Neil Jordan

29. “And I think I often choose to do something because it’s quite different from what I’ve done before.”

— Neil Jordan

30. “If movies have to satisfy every possible quadrant before they’re even made, they’re dull. You only get great things when people overreach themselves.”

— Neil Jordan

31. “For example, the character of Claire in In Dreams wasn’t imagined enough by me. Annette Bening is a great actress, and she gave a great performance, but because I hadn’t fully written it essentially the character wasn’t finished.”

— Neil Jordan

32. “Well, if you’re talking about the current climate, there’s a lack of content in American film because I think people are deeply confused about their emotions, and they don’t regret certain aspects of their own foreign policy.”

— Neil Jordan

33. “I walked with them, as crowds have that effect on me, I want to do what they do, to journey towards some point of revelation, which of course never comes.”

— Neil Jordan

34. “I’ve also worked hard portraying an Ireland which is fast disappearing. Ireland was a very depressed and difficult place in the 1980s, and I’ve tried to include that in the script. I worked really hard to find the heart of the book.”

— Neil Jordan

35. “I do enjoy working with writers.”

— Neil Jordan

36. “There’s no point in making a film out of a great book. The book’s already great. What’s the point?”

— Neil Jordan