Top 35 Neil LaBute Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The future is now. It’s time to grow up and be strong. Tomorrow may well be too late.”

— Neil LaBute

Featured in: Growing Up Quotes

2. “Everyone has a story.”

— Neil LaBute

3. “We live in a disposable society. It’s easier to throw things out than to fix them. We even give it a name – we call it recycling.”

— Neil LaBute

4. “I didn’t choose BYU, I like to think it chose me.”

— Neil LaBute

5. “Without In The Company of Men, I could still be teaching, so who knows if this would’ve existed.”

— Neil LaBute

6. “My best male friend is my best friend until he crosses me. We’re all protective of the self.”

— Neil LaBute

7. “Everybody has the ability to be manipulative, to be hateful and deceitful.”

— Neil LaBute

8. “I will say that the idea of a woman being deceptive came from that original discussion with critics and reporters about if woman could do that kind of thing. Evelyn, herself, grew out of the discussions about how capable women are of deceit and lying and manipulation.”

— Neil LaBute

9. “People think my work is therapeutic. I don’t see it that way. It’s not like I’m saving money from a weekly therapy visit by writing down my life.”

— Neil LaBute

10. “I see bits and pieces of me in all the characters in my films.”

— Neil LaBute

11. “It’s funny how that comes up, because sometimes I’ll write something and I’ll think, I don’t know if that’s a film or a play, and then other things I feel very strongly about them just being plays – they feel very theatrical to me.”

— Neil LaBute

12. “First I would probably place men at the bottom of the food chain. On a grander scale, I would say they’re reacting to change. Feminism has got to be part of that.”

— Neil LaBute

13. “With In the Company of Men, the misogynist label stuck early and firmly. In the end, it probably did hurt the film a bit, because getting women into the theaters was difficult.”

— Neil LaBute

14. “I felt, if I’m going to take on some of the most overdone material, which is men and women and affairs and betrayal of friends, I had better have a new take on it. I think my films come from a desperation not to be boring.”

— Neil LaBute

15. “Unrequited love is always a great thing.”

— Neil LaBute

16. “My business is can I create a world that’s possible and could happen? I think that’s the only thing that I have to do, and I think that I have done that each time.”

— Neil LaBute

17. “I was very careful to cast guys who were very good-looking and very fit and who had a certain sense of privilege about them, because with that sense of privilege comes contempt.”

— Neil LaBute

18. “People have perhaps gotten to the point where for the most part movies are a just bit of escape.”

— Neil LaBute

19. “Just in the past few years – since I’ve been making movies, which isn’t a very long time – you now have a culture that is fascinated and informed about the box office in a way that sometimes filmmakers weren’t even.”

— Neil LaBute

20. “But for me, it feels like a natural extension of what I’ve been doing: exploring relationships. Here you have two relationships and we can explore how difficult it is for people to be together.”

— Neil LaBute

21. “If we put the camera on ourselves, our friends and neighbors, we’ll come up with some scary stuff.”

— Neil LaBute

22. “But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he’s in a place where I wouldn’t have expected him to be – taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend’s wife.”

— Neil LaBute

23. “Relationships in general make people a bit nervous. It’s about trust. Do I trust you enough to go there?”

— Neil LaBute

24. “In a relationship you have to open yourself up.”

— Neil LaBute

25. “I have a healthy view of what one can do with art.”

— Neil LaBute

26. “There is a lot of absurdity sometimes, not just in Mormonism but often in other religions that want to pretend that no bad happens in their church, rather than taking care of what bad does happen.”

— Neil LaBute

27. “And I’ve got some screenplays and plays ready to dip into when I need to.”

— Neil LaBute

28. “And with Aaron, I’d have to find a reason not to work with him.”

— Neil LaBute

29. “You start as an audience member and create a world you’re interested in, and then you move into the telling of those stories, bringing what has interested you as an audience member.”

— Neil LaBute

30. “I make movies I want to see.”

— Neil LaBute

31. “I wanted to tell a story that interested me as much in the telling as in the watching.”

— Neil LaBute

32. “I was always looking for the most dramatic emphasis.”

— Neil LaBute

33. “Movies are – all I’ve found is that they’re just tougher and tougher to make.”

— Neil LaBute

34. “We humans are a fairly barbarous bunch.”

— Neil LaBute

35. “Everyone has a little bit of Howard and Chad in them. I think there’s Christine in all men as well.”

— Neil LaBute

36. “I’m more than open to hope, but I think men and women have a difficult time dealing with each other and often take the low road.”

— Neil LaBute

37. “I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction.”

— Neil LaBute

38. “I think Christine and Chad are on the opposite extremes of the spectrum. Christine is a model victim, and Chad is a model perpetrator, and Howard is closer to the middle.”

— Neil LaBute

39. “I think the more the actor lets you know what he thinks of the character, the less the audience cares – like a comedian who laughs at his own jokes.”

— Neil LaBute