James Cameron Quotes


"I actually started as a model builder and quickly progressed into production design, which made sense because I could draw and paint. But I kept watching that guy over there who was moving the actors around and setting up the shots."
- James Cameron
(Related: Design, Actors, Production, Sense)

"I blame it on Walt Disney, where animals are given human qualities. People don't understand that a wild animal is not something that is nice to pat. It can seriously harm you."
- James Cameron
(Related: People, Animals, Blame, Disney, Harm)

"I certainly didn't think of myself as gifted. The standards for being gifted in my environment were if you were good in Little League or if you were good in football."
- James Cameron
(Related: Being, Environment, Football)

"I do an awful lot of scuba diving. I love to be on the ocean, under the ocean. I live next to the ocean."
- James Cameron
(Related: Love, Ocean)

"It'll be all of our efforts together. It won't won't ever be exactly the way I imagined it. And that is, I think, an important lesson as well, is that in any group enterprise it's going to be the sum total of the group."
- James Cameron
"You know, in the film making business no one ever gives you anything."
- James Cameron
(Related: Business, Film)

"You have to not listen to the nay sayers because there will be many and often they'll be much more qualified than you and cause you to sort of doubt yourself."
- James Cameron
(Related: Cause, Doubt, Will)

"What are you gonna do, talk the alien to death?"
- James Cameron
(Related: Death, Talk)

"There is a hugely underserved population out there... those who are the least capable of paying pay the highest."
- James Cameron
(Related: Population)

"The magic doesn't come from within the director's mind, it comes from within the hearts of the actors."
- James Cameron
(Related: Actors, Magic, Mind)

"The film industry is about saying 'no' to people, and inherently you cannot take 'no' for an answer."
- James Cameron
(Related: People, Film, Saying)

"So much of literary sci-fi is about creating worlds that are rich and detailed and make sense at a social level. We'll create a world for people and then later present a narrative in that world."
- James Cameron
(Related: People, Literary, Present, Sense, World)

"I had pictured myself as a filmmaker but I had never pictured myself as a director if that makes any sense at all."
- James Cameron
(Related: Sense)

"My mother was a housewife but she was also an artist. My father was an electrical engineer."
- James Cameron
(Related: Mother, Father, Artist, Housewife)

"I had read tons of science fiction. I was fascinated by other worlds, other environments. For me, it was fantasy, but it was not fantasy in the sense of pure escapism."
- James Cameron
(Related: Science, Escapism, Fantasy, Fiction, Sense)

"It took me a long time to realize that you have to have a bit of an interlanguage with actors. You have to give them something that they can act with."
- James Cameron
(Related: Time, Act, Actors)

"If you wait until the right time to have a child you'll die childless, and I think film making is very much the same thing. You just have to take the plunge and just start shooting something even if it's bad."
- James Cameron
(Related: Time, Film, Right)

"I watched a couple of really bad directors work, and I saw how they completely botched it up and missed the visual opportunities of the scene when we had put things in front of them as opportunities. Set pieces, props and so on."
- James Cameron
(Related: Work)

"I was always fascinated by engineering. Maybe it was an attempt maybe to get my father's respect or interest, or maybe it was just a genetic love of technology, but I was always trying to build things."
- James Cameron
(Related: Love, Technology, Father, Engineering, Interest, Respect, Trying)

"I mean, you have to be able - you have to have made the commitment within yourself to do whatever it takes to get the job done and to try to inspire other people to do it, because obviously the first rule is you can't do it by yourself."
- James Cameron
(Related: People, Commitment, First, Job)

"I love short trips to New York; to me it is the finest three-day town on earth."
- James Cameron
(Related: Love, Earth)

"I lived in a small town. It was 2,000 people in Canada. A little river that went through it and we swam in the - you know, there was a lot of water around. Niagara Falls was about four or five miles away."
- James Cameron
(Related: People, Canada, Niagara, Water)

"The films that influenced me were so disparate that there's almost no pattern."
- James Cameron
"Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you're a director. Everything after that you're just negotiating your budget and your fee."
- James Cameron
(Related: Sister, Friends, Name, Now)

"There are many talented people who haven't fulfilled their dreams because they over thought it, or they were too cautious, and were unwilling to make the leap of faith."
- James Cameron
(Related: Dreams, Faith, Thought, People)