Best quotes from Christopher Nolan

Christopher Edward Nolan is a British and American filmmaker. Known for his Hollywood blockbusters with complex storytelling, Nolan is considered a leading filmmaker of the 21st century. He has received many accolades, including nominations for eight Academy Awards, and his films have grossed more than $6 billion worldwide, ranking him among the highest-grossing directors. In 2024, he was honoured with the British Film Institute Fellowship. Christopher Nolan developed an interest in filmmaking from a young age.

After studying English literature at University College London, he made several short films before his feature film debut with Following (1998). Nolan gained international recognition with his second film, Memento (2000), for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. He transitioned from independent to studio filmmaking with Insomnia (2002), and found further critical and commercial success with The Dark Knight trilogy (2005-2012), The Prestige (2006) and Inception (2010); the last of these earned Nolan two Oscar nominations – Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay.

This was followed by Interstellar (2014), Dunkirk (2017) and Tenet (2020). For the war drama Dunkirk, he earned two Academy Award nominations, including his first for Best Director. Parting ways with longtime distributor Warner Bros. Pictures, Nolan signed with Universal Pictures for the biopic Oppenheimer (2023), which won him a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for Best Direction. Nolan’s work regularly features in the listings of best films of their respective decades.

Infused with a metaphysical outlook, his films thematise epistemology, existentialism, ethics, the construction of time, and the malleable nature of memory and personal identity. They feature mathematically-inspired images and concepts, unconventional narrative structures, practical special effects, experimental soundscapes, large-format film photography, and materialistic perspectives. He has co-written several of his films with his brother, Jonathan, and runs the production company Syncopy Inc. with his wife, Emma Thomas.

Some of the best quotes from Christopher Nolan are listed below.

1. “A camera is a camera, a shot is a shot, how you tell the story is the main thing.” – Christopher Nolan
2. “A hero can be anyone, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat on a young boy’s shoulders to let him know the world hadn’t ended.” – Christopher Nolan
3. “As soon as television became the only secondary way in which films were watched, films had to adhere to a pretty linear system, whereby you can drift off for ten minutes and go and answer the phone and not really lose your place.” – Christopher Nolan
4. “Batman and Superman are very different characters but they’re both iconic and elemental. Finding the right story for them both is the key.” – Christopher Nolan
5. “But, in each case, as a filmmaker who’s been given sizable budgets with which to work, I feel a responsibility to the audience to be shooting with the absolute highest quality technology that I can and make the film in a way that I want.” – Christopher Nolan
6. “By the time I was 10 or 11, I knew I wanted to make films.” – Christopher Nolan
7. “Every film should have its own world, a logic and feel to it that expands beyond the exact image that the audience is seeing.” – Christopher Nolan
8. “Every great story deserves a great ending.” – Christopher Nolan
9. “Film is the best way to capture an image and project that image. It just is, hands down.” – Christopher Nolan
10. “Heist movies tend to be a bit superficial, glamorous, and fun. They don’t tend to be emotionally engaging.” – Christopher Nolan
11. “I don’t actually tend to do a lot of research when I’m writing. I do know because I think a lot of what I find you want to do with research is just confirming things you want to do. If the research contradicts what you want to do, you tend to go ahead and do it anyway.” – Christopher Nolan
12. “I don’t particularly enjoy watching films in 3D because I think that a well-shot and well-projected film has a very three-dimensional quality to it, so I’m somewhat sceptical of the technology.” – Christopher Nolan
13. “I have always been a big fan of the character and am more of a moviegoer than a comic book guy, there is always something about the character of Batman that is very elemental. There is a great powerful myth to the character and romantic element that draws from a lot of literary sources.” – Christopher Nolan
14. “I have always been a huge fan of Ridley Scott and certainly when I was a kid. ‘Alien,’ ‘Blade Runner’ just blew me away because they created these extraordinary worlds that were just completely immersive. I was also an enormous Stanley Kubrick fan for similar reasons.” – Christopher Nolan
15. “I have been interested in dreams, really since I was a kid. I have always been fascinated by the idea that your mind, when you are asleep, can create a world in a dream and you are perceiving it as though it really existed.” – Christopher Nolan
16. “I just love photographing things and putting them together to tell a story.” – Christopher Nolan
17. “I like films that continue to spin your head in all sorts of different directions after you’ve seen them.” – Christopher Nolan
18. “I like films where the music and the sound design, at times, are almost indistinguishable.” – Christopher Nolan
19. “I made ‘Batman’ the way I made every other film, and I’ve done it to my own satisfaction – because the film, truly, is exactly the way I wanted it to be.” – Christopher Nolan
20. “I never considered myself a lucky person. I’m the most extraordinary pessimist. I truly am.” – Christopher Nolan
21. “I never meet anybody who actually likes the format, and it’s always a source of great concern to me when you’re charging a higher price for something that nobody seems to really say they have any great love for.” – Christopher Nolan
22. “I realized that if you’re trying to reach an audience, being as subjective as possible and really trying to write from something genuine is the way to go. Really, it’s mostly from my own process, my own experience.” – Christopher Nolan
23. “I remember the initial genesis quite clearly. My interest in dreams comes from this notion of realizing that when you dream you create the world that you are perceiving, and I thought that feedback loop was pretty amazing.” – Christopher Nolan
24. “I think audiences get too comfortable and familiar in today’s movies. They believe everything they’re hearing and seeing. I like to shake that up.” – Christopher Nolan
25. “I think for me when you look at the idea of being able to create a limitless world and use it almost as a playground for action and adventure and so forth, I naturally gravitate towards cinematic worlds, whether it’s the Bond films and things like that.” – Christopher Nolan
26. “I think for me, what I’m doing on set is I’m watching things happen as an audience member and trying to just look at, what’s the image we’re photographing, how will that advance the story and what will the next image be.” – Christopher Nolan
27. “I think there are advantages to different scales of filmmaking. You wouldn’t want to do just one thing.” – Christopher Nolan
28. “I think there’s a vague sense out there that movies are becoming more and more unreal. I know I’ve felt it.” – Christopher Nolan
29. “I try to be as efficient as possible because in my process, I think that actually helps the work. I like having the pressure of time and money and really trying to stick to the parameters we’ve been given.” – Christopher Nolan
30. “I want to be surprised and entertained by a movie, so that’s what we’re trying to do for the audience. Obviously, we also have to sell the film.” – Christopher Nolan
31. “I will miss the Batman. I like to think that he’ll miss me, but he’s never been particularly sentimental.” – Christopher Nolan
32. “I would never say someone else’s film isn’t ‘a real film.’ The quote is inaccurate.” – Christopher Nolan
33. “I’m taking a bit of a wait-and-see attitude towards 3D.” – Christopher Nolan
34. “I’m very happy where 3-D is going, which is that it’s becoming a choice – and thankfully, most people are still choosing 2-D.” – Christopher Nolan
35. “I’ve always been a movie guy, movies have been my thing. I love movies, all kinds of movies.” – Christopher Nolan
36. “I’ve always believed that if you want to really try and make a great film, not a good film, but a great film, you have to take a lot of risks.” – Christopher Nolan
37. “I’ve been fascinated by dreams my whole life, since I was a kid, and I think the relationship between movies and dreams is something that’s always interested me.” – Christopher Nolan
38. “I’ve been interested in dreams since I as a kid and I’ve wanted to do a film about them for a long time.” – Christopher Nolan
39. “I’ve done really well so far in my career by trusting the audience to be as dissatisfied with convention as I am, as a film-goer. You want to go see a film that surprises you in some way.” – Christopher Nolan
40. “I’ve never read Joseph Campbell, and I don’t know all that much about story archetypes.” – Christopher Nolan
41. “If I could steal someone’s dream myself, I’d have to go for one of Orson Welles.” – Christopher Nolan
42. “If you’re going to perform inception, you need imagination. You need the simplest version of the idea-the one that will grow naturally in the subject’s mind. Subtle art.” – Christopher Nolan
43. “In Hollywood there’s a great openness, almost a voracious appetite for new people. In England there’s a great suspicion of the new. In cultural terms, that can be a good thing, but when you’re trying to break into the film industry, it’s definitely a bad thing.” – Christopher Nolan
44. “It’s always a fun collaboration with my brother. I’m very fortunate to be able to work with him. There’s an honesty to collaboration. There’s a lack of a gender or ego in our conversations. And so you can really throw anything around.” – Christopher Nolan
45. “It’s certainly difficult to balance marketing a film and putting it out there to everybody with wanting to keep it fresh for the audience.” – Christopher Nolan
46. “It’s not that often that you get to have a large commercial success and then have something that you want to do that you can excite people about.” – Christopher Nolan
47. “Movie logistics never really allow you to do anything but shoot the way the budget dictates.” – Christopher Nolan
48. “My approach with actors is to try and give them whatever it is they need from me. Direction to me is about listening and responding and realizing how much they need to know from me and how much they have figured out for themselves, really.” – Christopher Nolan
49. “My most enjoyable movie going experiences have always been going to a movie theater, sitting there and the lights go down and a film comes on the screen that you don’t know everything about, and you don’t know every plot turn and every character movement that’s going to happen.” – Christopher Nolan
50. “One of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself.” – Christopher Nolan
51. “People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy, and I can’t do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man, I’m flesh and blood. I can be ignored. I can be destroyed. But as a symbol, as a symbol I can be incorruptible, I can be everlasting.” – Christopher Nolan
52. “People want to see something that shows them you can do what you say. That’s the trick.” – Christopher Nolan
53. “Restfully reassured by his new friends, Joseph now nominated God in a new light, ‘Man is God hesitant and God is Man hesitantly trying to help.” – Christopher Nolan
54. “Revenge is a particularly interesting concept, especially the notion of whether or not it exists outside of just an abstract idea.” – Christopher Nolan
55. “Sometime, when you start thinking too much what an audience is going to think, when you’re too self-conscious about it, you make mistakes.” – Christopher Nolan
56. “Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn’t really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously.” – Christopher Nolan
57. “Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn’t really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. He’s not from another planet, or filled with radioactive gunk. I mean, Superman is essentially a god, but Batman is more like Hercules: he’s a human being, very flawed, and bridges the divide.” – Christopher Nolan
58. “The best actors instinctively feel out what the other actors need, and they just accommodate it.” – Christopher Nolan
59. “The film that really struck me was Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. That was a film I watched many, many times and found endlessly fascinating in its density. I think the density of that film is primarily visual density, atmospheric, sound density, more so than narrative density.” – Christopher Nolan
60. “The only job that was ever of interest to me other than filmmaking is architecture.” – Christopher Nolan
61. “The problem with big films is they snowball very rapidly and you can never pull back. It’s a pipeline that needs to be fed.” – Christopher Nolan
62. “The quality of racing continues to excel with starters increasing to 1496.” – Christopher Nolan
63. “The real truth of that is that much as you want to believe that it’s you being on top of everything, you’re actually relying massively on the people around you.” – Christopher Nolan
64. “The structural notions to me always have to be worked out very carefully in the script stage. Whatever a particular structure is. Whether it’s chronological or non-chronological. To me that’s always about what point of view are we trying to address in the film?” – Christopher Nolan
65. “The term ‘genre’ eventually becomes pejorative because you’re referring to something that’s so codified and ritualised that it ceases to have the power and meaning it had when it first started.” – Christopher Nolan
66. “The thing you fail to grasp is that people are not basically good. We are basically selfish. We shove and clamour and cry for adoration, and beat down everyone else to get it. Life is a competition of prattling peacocks enraptured in inane mating rituals. But for all our effacing and self-importance, we are all slaves to what we fear most. You have so very much to learn. Here. Let me teach you.” – Christopher Nolan
67. “There are points where you worry that you might be putting too much in and alienating the audience. But, funnily enough, some of those fears aren’t correct.” – Christopher Nolan
68. “There are very few directors I think in this industry that would pitch to a studio that they wanted to do a multi-layered almost at times existential high action, high drama surreal film that’s sort of locked in his mind. And then have an opportunity to do that.” – Christopher Nolan
69. “To be honest, I don’t enjoy watching movies much when I’m working. They tend to fall apart on me a bit.” – Christopher Nolan
70. “We all wake up in the morning wanting to live our lives the way we know we should. But we usually don’t, in small ways. That’s what makes a character like Batman so fascinating. He plays out our conflicts on a much larger scale.” – Christopher Nolan
71. “We shouldn’t be chasing other movies, but stay true to the tone of Man of Steel.” – Christopher Nolan
72. “Well, you always discover a lot in the editing room. Particularly the action, because you have to over-shoot a lot and shoot an enormous amount of material because many of the sequences have to be discovered in the editing and manipulation of it.” – Christopher Nolan
73. “When I look at a digitally acquired and projected image, it looks inferior against an original negative anamorphic print or an IMAX one.” – Christopher Nolan
74. “When you play a videogame, you could be a completely different person than you are in the real world, certain aspects of the way your brain works can be leveraged for something you could never do in the real world.” – Christopher Nolan
75. “When you’re dealing with the world of dreams, the psyche, and potential of a human mind, there has to be emotional stakes. You have to deal with issues of memory and desire.” – Christopher Nolan
76. “Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up.” – Christopher Nolan
77. “Writing, for me, is a combination of objective and subjective approach. You take an objective approach at times to get you through things, and you take a subjective approach at other times, and that allows you to find an emotional experience for the audience.” – Christopher Nolan
78. “You always have to be very aware that the audience is extremely ruthless in its demand for newness, novelty and freshness.” – Christopher Nolan
79. “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.” – Christopher Nolan
80. “You never quite know what you’re going to come back to and figure out how to make it work. You never quite know where that desire to finish something, or return to something in a fresh way, is going to come from. Every time I finished a film and went back and looked at it, I had changed as a person.” – Christopher Nolan
81. “You’re never going to learn something as profoundly as when it’s purely out of curiosity.” – Christopher Nolan