Top 50 Richard Linklater Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure, while always arriving.”

— Richard Linklater

2. “Memory is a wonderful thing if you don’t have to deal with the past.”

— Richard Linklater

3. “Being alone is better than sitting next to a lover and feeling lonely.”

— Richard Linklater

4. “The trick is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. Because, if you can do that, you can do anything.”

— Richard Linklater

5. “There are a million ideas in a world of stories. Humans are storytelling animals. Everything’s a story, everyone’s got stories, we’re perceiving stories, we’re interested in stories. So to me, the big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what’s the right way to tell a particular story.”

— Richard Linklater

6. “I always think that I’m still this 13-year old boy that doesn’t really know how to be an adult, pretending to live my life, taking notes for when I’ll really have to do it.”

— Richard Linklater

7. “Filmmakers are going to make films, just like painters are going to paint.”

— Richard Linklater

8. “When you’re trying to get laid, everything’s great, but once you’ve been with someone eight years and the future is not finite, you have time to sit and really examine every little thing that irritates you.”

— Richard Linklater

9. “It’s disappointing to see films become pure entertainment, so that it’s not an art form.”

— Richard Linklater

10. “If you establish rules and play by them, the audience will buy in.”

— Richard Linklater

11. “Yeah, a memory’s never finished, if you really think about it.”

— Richard Linklater

12. “I see the people that do the real work, and what in a way is really sad is that the people that are often the most giving, hardworking, and capable of making this world better don’t really have the ambition and ego to be a leader – they don’t see any interest in the rewards, they don’t care if their names ever appear in the press, they actually enjoy the process of helping others, they are truly in the moment.”

— Richard Linklater

13. “We all give ourselves a lot of leeway, but we want consistency from other people.”

— Richard Linklater

14. “That’s what I like about traveling – you can sit down, maybe talk to someone interesting, see something beautiful, read a good book, and that’s enough to qualify as a good day. You do that at home and everyone thinks you’re a bum.”

— Richard Linklater

15. “No one is asking what happened to all the homeless. No one cares, because it’s easier to get on the subway and not be accosted.”

— Richard Linklater

16. “Monogamy, monotony. There’s only a couple of letters...”

— Richard Linklater

17. “At some point, you’re no longer growing up, you’re aging. But no one can pinpoint that moment exactly.”

— Richard Linklater

18. “I worked offshore as an oil worker for a couple of years.”

— Richard Linklater

19. “I can’t help but think that at the end of your life, when you look back, there’ll be a tone. And that tone will come from the essence of how you live your day to day what you did in that between time because that is really your life.”

— Richard Linklater

20. “The rules of parenting have changed. By the modern definition, we were a generation of neglected children.”

— Richard Linklater

21. “I’m lucky that I get to jump around, do a big-budget comedy and then a smaller film. I don’t even make a big distinction between them. No one believes this, but it’s the same. I’m the same person, trying to make it work. I just love being on a movie set. I like making movies.”

— Richard Linklater

22. “It’s hard to see a film one time and really “get it,” and write fully and intelligently about it. That’s a review. That’s not film criticism.”

— Richard Linklater

23. “I think I got really lucky with Slacker. That was a film that probably shouldn’t have been seen.”

— Richard Linklater

24. “Whatever story you want to tell, tell it at the right size.”

— Richard Linklater

25. “The big nut to crack is to how to tell a story, what’s the right way to tell a particular story.”

— Richard Linklater

26. “Something about Texas I’m not proud of is that our state murdered 37 people last year alone.”

— Richard Linklater

27. “I’ve always been most interested in the politics of everyday life: your relation to whatever you’re doing, or what your ambitions are, where you live, where you find yourself in the social hierarchy.”

— Richard Linklater

28. “Hollywood has a way of sucking the world’s talent to it.”

— Richard Linklater

29. “In a sea of stories, find the right one to tell, and the right way to tell it.”

— Richard Linklater

30. “It has to be very tight to seem loose.”

— Richard Linklater

31. “I do find myself at the moment, due to the success of School of Rock, to be on people’s radar a little.”

— Richard Linklater

32. “As a teenager, I wanted to write novels. By college, it was theater, plays, and then, shortly, it was film.”

— Richard Linklater

33. “I’ve always liked the minds of criminals, they seem similar to artists.”

— Richard Linklater

34. “I didn’t have any set idea of what kind of filmmaker I wanted to be. I knew I wanted to tell stories that meant something to me, but I never said I was going to be the weird, avant-garde guy.”

— Richard Linklater

35. “I think you get in trouble if you make experimental big studio films.”

— Richard Linklater

36. “I’ve never been a guy who had more than a toe in Hollywood anyway, so my toe is more easily lopped off than most.”

— Richard Linklater

37. “Before Sunrise did very well internationally. It made as much in Italy and Korea as it did here.”

— Richard Linklater

38. “I want to make a film about a factory worker.”

— Richard Linklater

39. “I did The Newton Boys and during the whole process of making the film, I may have spent a week in Los Angeles.”

— Richard Linklater

40. “Our country needs more tough critics like you who don’t just swallow the hype like everyone else. So many writers might as well be on the payroll – be it entertainment industry or government.”

— Richard Linklater

41. “I’d be fine to make movies and have them never come out. But you have to deal with the business side. You can’t get too emotionally invested, because again, you’ve got no control. There’s going to be some huge film out that everyone goes to, and it probably won’t be mine.”

— Richard Linklater

42. “I think maybe making films is something innate you can’t really teach to begin with.”

— Richard Linklater

43. “I always sensed instinctively from the earliest age that I was being lied to.”

— Richard Linklater

44. “As we know from our government, the more power you have, the more of a bureaucrat you are, and the more ego you have invested in being right, the greater the odds are that you will never change your opinion.”

— Richard Linklater

45. “There are so many great artists, I think, who kind of suffer from being icons, legends, acknowledged masters.”

— Richard Linklater

46. “Everyone is encouraged to see their lives, the world through the eyes of the rich.”

— Richard Linklater

47. “The worst thing is that you used to be able to show interesting films on campuses. Those places are all gone.”

— Richard Linklater

48. “People think drama drives story, but I think the comedy is really the heart and soul.”

— Richard Linklater

49. “Well, you have to keep your faith in the fact that there are a lot of intelligent people who are actively looking for something interesting, people who have been disappointed so many times.”

— Richard Linklater

50. “It’s tough, man. Unless it’s a tentpole, sequel, remake, or over-the-top comedy, that’s all the studios are even doing. They’ve kind of admitted they’re not in the business of doing anything else. The slightest level of irony or intelligence and, boom, you’re out of the league, you’re done.”

— Richard Linklater