Top 70 Peter Jackson Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The most honest form of filmmaking is to make a film for yourself.”

— Peter Jackson

Featured in: Filmmaking Quotes

2. “A wizard is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.”

— Peter Jackson

3. “Remember, pain is temporary; film is forever.”

— Peter Jackson

4. “One does not simply walk into Mordor.”

— Peter Jackson

5. “Defeat is always momentary.”

— Peter Jackson

6. “Filmmaking for me is always aiming for the imaginary movie and never achieving it.”

— Peter Jackson

7. “End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.”

— Peter Jackson

8. “New Zealand is not a small country but a large village.”

— Peter Jackson

9. “Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what I have found. It is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.”

— Peter Jackson

10. “A pregnant woman is like a beautiful flowering tree, but take care when it comes time for the harvest that you do not shake or bruise the tree, for in doing so, you may harm both the tree and its fruit.”

— Peter Jackson

11. “New Zealand is not used to wealth. In America wealth is kind of a thing of pride. Here it’s the opposite. The more you’ve got, the bigger the target you are.”

— Peter Jackson

12. “If you work at love, you will find love at work.”

— Peter Jackson

13. “I want to make movies just like “King Kong.” You know, dinosaurs, big gorillas – it’s everything that a nine year-old boy would fall in love with.”

— Peter Jackson

14. “Motion-capture is not a genre. Motion-capture is a tool and technique and what we tried to do was to really use both motion-capture and traditional animation to build a system.”

— Peter Jackson

15. “I regard myself as being the final filter so everything that ends up in the movie is there because it’s something that I think was cool.”

— Peter Jackson

16. “Structure is important in film, but there’s often structure to be found in the most unlikely of places! It’s quite possible to build a structured story and retain idiosyncrasy.”

— Peter Jackson

17. “When you’re casting a movie and when you’re shooting a film, the eyes are the most important feature of any performer, really. Any great actor literally knows exactly how to use their eyes, and even as a filmmaker I love shooting huge close-ups because it’s those eyes that mean so much to me.”

— Peter Jackson

18. “When I start a film, I can sort of shut my eyes, sit somewhere quiet and imagine the movie finished. I can imagine the camera angles, I can even imagine the type of music. Without knowing the tune, I can imagine the type of music it needs to be.”

— Peter Jackson

19. “To get an Oscar would be an incredible moment in my career, there is no doubt about that. But the ‘Lord of the Rings’ films are not made for Oscars, they are made for the audience.”

— Peter Jackson

20. “As a filmmaker, you are going to manipulate the character as you need to make the scenes work.”

— Peter Jackson

21. “You shouldn’t think of these movies as being ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ The Lord of the Rings is, and always will be, a wonderful book – one of the greatest ever written. Any films will only ever be an INTERPRETATION of the book. In this case my interpretation.”

— Peter Jackson

22. “Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in check. But that is not what I have found. I have found that it is the small things, everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay. Simple acts of kindness and love.”

— Peter Jackson

23. “To me, fantasy should be as real as possible. I don’t buy into the notion that because it’s fantastic, it should be unrealistic, because I think you have to have a sense of believing the world that you’re going into.”

— Peter Jackson

24. “Everybody’s life has these moments, where one thing leads to another. Some are big and obvious and some are small and seemingly insignificant.”

— Peter Jackson

25. “It comes in pints?”

— Peter Jackson

26. “He who must search a haystack for a needle is likely to end up with the attitude that the needle is not worth the search.”

— Peter Jackson

27. “To his ex-wife in court, he said I lost interest in you when the Botox lost its effect and you looked like a plastic doll that escaped from a fire.”

— Peter Jackson

28. “Fantasy is an ‘F’ word that hopefully the five second delay won’t do anything with.”

— Peter Jackson

29. “For a lot of my childhood, I didn’t want to direct movies because I didn’t really know what directing was.”

— Peter Jackson

30. “Every film is a challenge. I always say that making a movie is like film school – you’re always learning. But unlike most schools, you never get done with it. You never learn everything.”

— Peter Jackson

31. “It’s interesting how the frame rate actually changes the perception of the 3D as well as making it more comfortable to watch.”

— Peter Jackson

32. “No film has captivated my imagination more than ‘King Kong.’ I’m making movies today because I saw this film when I was 9 years old.”

— Peter Jackson

33. “I don’t like putting glasses on and watching 3D. I don’t mind wearing glasses, but it’s the dimness of the light and the fact that you’re filtering the light. Whatever 3D process is being used is a filtration of light, which means it’s blocking some of the light.”

— Peter Jackson

34. “It’s all about his determination. You never, ever, give up once you start something, once you’re on the trail of something you don’t stop and that’s what you have to go through when you’re making a movie too. Once the train’s rolling, you have to stick with it.”

— Peter Jackson

35. “There’s something incredibly tragic about Kong. You feel almost feel ashamed to be a human being when you see what happens to him. I mean he is ultimately a pure-heart.”

— Peter Jackson

36. “I regard myself as an entertainer much more than an artist.”

— Peter Jackson

37. “People call Kong “a monster.” He’s not. There’s nothing evil about Kong. He’s just another creature who has opened up a little bit of his heart to Ann and it proves to be his undoing.”

— Peter Jackson

38. “What I love about films is that you can see “King Kong” and you can be affected by it and then you realize that he was just this little guy when he made that fall.”

— Peter Jackson

39. “No matter how many great performances or exciting visuals we put together for the movie, we found that it was all somewhat two dimensional until we added the emotional heart of Howard Shore’s music. Then, and only then, did the film come to life.”

— Peter Jackson

40. “When you’re directing, you’re right at the coal face, always exhausted, often emotional – and I’ll enjoy being a couple of steps back from that and simply helping where I can.”

— Peter Jackson

41. “As human beings, we always have resistance against things that are different and there’s always suspicion.”

— Peter Jackson

42. “Actors will never be replaced. The thought that somehow a computer version of a character is going to be something people prefer to look at is a ludicrous idea.”

— Peter Jackson

43. “I think that’s the job of a director really – to sort of funnel all the creativity into one centralized point of being.”

— Peter Jackson

44. “I think that you can treat a classic like a museum piece -stuffed and mounted- or you can make it a living, breathing narrative that is unfolding right then and there.”

— Peter Jackson

45. “What I don’t like are pompous, pretentious movies.”

— Peter Jackson

46. “I was bullied and regarded as little bit of an oddball myself.”

— Peter Jackson

47. “To people in my industry I’m usually a guy that tries to generate his own projects and I remain very elusive when people try and attach me to big projects.”

— Peter Jackson

48. “I’m a Beatles fan, and I remember in the mid-1980s, when CDs first came out, there was a sound of vinyl and the sound of the needle on it that people loved, and suddenly CDs were threatening.”

— Peter Jackson

49. “I want to make a series of movies that run together, so if any crazy lunatic wants to watch them all in a row, there will be a consistency of tone.”

— Peter Jackson

50. “Elijah can register such subtle emotion on his face that I loved doing close-ups on him. He really brings a superb emotional level to Frodo’s scenes and although he is a very instinctive actor, we discussed the character thoroughly.”

— Peter Jackson