Nicolas Cage Quotes

Everybody is entitled to his own opinion.

I don't want to tell fans what to think or what to believe or whatever, but at the same time, some things just hit you very personally.

I never try to guess what anyone else will take from a movie. Every movie is such a different experience for each and every person. I don't like it when people try telling people what they should take from a movie. You should go see it with fresh eyes and see for themselves.

I think critics are very useful. But I think that they, in a way, betray their position when they stop people looking for themselves.

There's so much diversity of opinion out there, so ultimately you have to listen to it, put it aside, and make what you want to make.

The most important thing is to allow gaps and openings for people to make up their own minds - I don't want my film to be pretending to have one important truth to tell anyone.

I think two different people can read one of my books and come away with completely different opinions on the subject. I hope they just read from the beginning to the end and be made to think about the subject. Then they can come to their own conclusions.

It's always dangerous to prescribe an idea on other people. I think people's interactions with art are their own, and will be far more interesting and sophisticated than anything that I could come up with.

I read the book and I think, "Well, this is the movie we're going to make," and then someone else reads it, and they take a completely different movie from it. And both are valid.

If I tell the audience what they should think, then I am robbing them of their own imagination and their own capacity of deciding what's important to them.

Critics should help people see for themselves; they should never try to define things, or impose their own explanations, though I admit that if... a critic's explanations serve to increase the general obscurity, that's all to the good.

I think what is great is that if anything that I do is interesting to somebody else, then I really don't think it matters at all what I had originally intended.

Some people say Dylan Thomas mischievous, he's a child, and other people say he's quite demonic. I don't think we should dictate about him, if that's your view of him, that's wonderful, but it's great to know that other people think differently.

For some people, I got away with something. And you know what? That's a fair thing to say, for them. I'm not saying I agree with that, but I can see how they can say that. But it's a matter of just like...you know, I'm really fortunate. As a journalist, I don't have to agree with you to talk to you. My job is to figure out why you think the way you think. I want to get to the root of why you think the way you think. That's what I find most fascinating as a storyteller.

Never be limited by other people's limited imaginations. If you adopt their attitudes, then the possibility won't exist because you'll have already shut it out...You can hear other people's wisdom, but you've got to re-evaluate the world for yourself.

The filmmaker is not telling you what to think.

I painted the words "GREAT ADVENTURE" in Beijing, Dallas, San Francisco, Copenhagen, and Japan. What it means to me is completely different to everybody else. And that's what I love about random words and phrases taken out of context: everyone applies their own context. If you want to apply something political or meaningful to a word I wrote on the side of the wall, then it's up to you.

It's important to be true to the events, but the most important thing is to get to the essence of the experience. Not to be bogged down in an academic way by a notion of the truth. First of all, the truth is an illusive and spurious concept.

The proper method for hastening the decay of error, is not, by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.

Opinions are like belly buttons; everybody has one. I never knock a man for his opinion.

It isn't safe to sit in judgment upon another person's illusion when you are not on the inside. While you are thinking it is a dream, he may be knowing it is a planet.

Since I wasn't consulted at the time of the creation of the world, I reserve for myself the right to have my own opinion about it.

It is only natural, of course, that each man should think his own opinions best: the crow loves his fledgling, and the ape his cub.

I'm not presumptuous enough to feel that people are going to feel what I have in mind, so I tell a story, you know, let them read something, that doesn't change, that as I have said it, you know, so that's the way I feel about the viewer, the viewer has a mind of their own and eyes of their own and they're going to see it their way, I just hope they look.

Everybody has an opinion. I think everybody has the right to believe whatever they want. I don't ever cast judgment on someone's belief system.