Emir Kusturica Quotes

That is a Medieval way of drawing history, in which they do not respect the law and want the rest of the world to respect the law. That’s not possible.

I’m fed up with democracy. In a democracy, people vote for the mayors. I wanted to build a city where I will choose the citizens.

I started moving towards Serbia when I felt my country, Yugoslavia, was being taken away from me. My feeling of nationality was not as strong as those around me who were attaching themselves to these absurd new entities.

I put my ideas into practice. That may be the reason people hate me.

I never wanted an independent Bosnia. I wanted Yugoslavia. That is my country.

My purpose is to make a movie to make you warm. To give you some heat. Now, this rational world has become a place where only what is cool is good. Do you cut the movie on the basis of the beat of modernity or the basis of the beat of your own heart?

If you say morality is just what you like, you lose the metaphysical level of what in the history of philosophy is called ‘categorical imperative.’

I am very impulsive and very stupid sometimes, but I am very clean.

I am a living illustration of Bosnian mixing and converting. My grandparents lived in eastern Herzegovina. Very poor. The Turks came and brought Islam. There were three brothers in the family. One was Orthodox Christian. The other two took Islam to survive.

When you make movies the way I do, you invest everything you have. And you do it like a crazy maniac.

When I was a student looking at Leonardo DaVinci and all those guys – Italian, Dutch, or whatever – it’s incredible how each piece of the painting fits to the main theme that they want to express.

Making movies is a dangerous job. Because you are always the one who stands at the center of the universe when making movies.

Just because I believe in the identity and integrity of my country doesn’t make a xenophobe or a nationalist.

My relationship with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is very clear: respect. We met a couple of times; once I received a medal from him. I respect hugely how he brought Russia back from its knees.

I know it is crazy, but I want to create a place where people can come in an organised way to think differently, to think their own thoughts.

I will not cut my film because, because, because, because of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

I am finished with cities. I spent four years in New York, ten in Paris, and I was in Belgrade for a while. To me now they are just airports.

I am my best enemy.

My father was always saying we were Serbs, but I didn’t pay much attention.

I am a man with a lot of passion.

I am somebody who respects Putin highly, but I’m not somebody who is against America.

In Serbia a lot of people hate me because they want to westernize, not understanding that the western world is bipolar, with very good things and very bad things.

I’m not anti-American. I was raised to love both sides.

At a certain moment, Yugoslavia stopped being rational, and then you end up going to war.

I’m just a troublemaker.

You know, in each segment of ex-Yugoslavia, multi-ethnic life is lost, except I think we somehow still have this in Serbia.

Most people only remember Maradona for the bad parts now. But he was a genius, someone who lifted us and himself up to the level of the gods.

I’ve been around some very famous people, but no one has the effect Maradona has; people tremble in his presence.

Every time I’m shooting a movie I want to kill myself. Because I don’t see the light in the end of the tunnel.

I think the city is the strongest social memory organ of humanity.