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" I think when my parents were together, my family was too prosperous for our psychological health. Not that they were that rich, but I feel that usually inherited wealth causes psychological problems. "

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" I remember when I was trying to do 'Metropolitan,' in breaks I would read a page of two of Jane Austen as a palate-cleanser. "

Whit Stillman

Trying

Two

Breaks

" With all my films, the pace is not very fast, and so people get bored with them and comment that they're just people talking in rooms and all that. "

" When you're doing the work, film and TV are exactly the same. TV is just film in reduced pieces. "

" Paris is a Roach Motel for top American journalists: They check in, having won the plum foreign posting, but never leave. "

" I really like working with people again and again, and I don't know why everyone doesn't do it. Because you already know them, and you know how good they are. "

" Producers have a tendency to put you in a pigeonhole: 'What does this white, middle-aged preppy know about 1960s Kingston?' "

" I'm a late bloomer. Even in high school, everyone else was charging ahead, and I didn't come into my own until very late. I feel that's true in cinema, too. I didn't even start 'Metropolitan' until I was 37. "

" Whether for company or isolation or just to make it a pleasurable experience, I have music in my ears all the time. I tend to listen to the same things, so I don't really pay too much attention to it. But it's there, and it's nice, and I do pay more attention to it than I probably should. I think, 'How can I use this music in something?' "

" I'm the ayatollah of the Jane Austen fan base! I want to lead the fan base, not be attacked and devoured by the fan base. "

" My theory in the '90s was that I didn't want to take a Jane Austen book I loved and reduce it to a 90-minute movie. The Emma Thompson-Ang Lee 'Sense and Sensibility' was beautiful, but other ones, I didn't think justice was being done. It's not a slam dunk to adapt these books. "

" I love making cheap films. I really do. What I've found is that I work better when it's both a fairly low budget and a short schedule. It focuses the mind, and it's a better atmosphere. "

" There's so much of this thing now, where you're supposed to do all the work before you get the commission. I think it's really good to try to resist that. If you just have a week to come up with a pitch for something, your ideas aren't going to be very good. Get your income from somewhere else, and keep your writing not tied into these contracts. "

" I don't think there's anything cliche feminine about Jane Austen. And, anyway, her earliest champions were Sir Walter Scott and the Prince Regent. "

" It's a challenge for any writer to write beyond what he knows. You get material, adapt it, and do the best you can with it. "

" Some critic complained about how many small films are released in New York... it annoyed me. Those small films that are lucky to get two weeks are often my favorite films of the year. "

" Oscar Wilde was sort of my first love as a young reader. And then I went on to love Jane Austen's wonderful - this sort of comedy coming from her. I mean, all of her books are comic. "

" I like to allow a story to arise as I'm writing scripts. I find it horrible when I try to think of something for the plot without really being on the ground and seeing where it goes. "

" Happy is the small business that can hire additional employees besides the proprietor; rare is the indie-film enterprise that can be happy in this way. The norm is an unpaid principal with no employees between productions. "

" A lot of people in the film industry are fatalists who think a worthwhile film will always achieve its destiny, and the films that aren't worthwhile won't. It's all sort of pre-determined, etc. And I don't think that's true at all. "

" I love writing novels, but I'm very fearful about writing something from absolute scratch. I kind of don't have the time to write something from scratch. I think when my knees completely give out, and I can't make films anymore, I would try to write novels from scratch. "

" I identify entirely with Jane Austen's point of view, on everything. "

" I had, in college, a professor called Walter Jackson Bate, and he taught a course called The Age of Johnson. It's about Samuel Johnson and his period, 18th-century British writing. So we all got to endure Samuel Johnson, and Boswell's 'Life of Johnson' is now my favorite book. I read it all the time I can; it's great for going to sleep. "

" My biggest false steps have actually been when I tried to do very different projects. I found I was getting people saying, 'Why does Whit Stillman think he can do a film about blacks in early '60s Jamaica? Or the Chinese and the cultural revolution?' Those were the two biggest failures I had getting off the ground. "

" My family was entirely political, all the time, on the left. The opposite of that is not to be political on the right. It's trying not to be - politics is not everything. There's life other than politics. Politics intrudes. "

" When people are telling stories on screen, you can show the reactions of people, play it off those reactions, and it can be fun. But when it's someone just giving an opinion on things, even if the opinion is kind of interesting, that is potentially deadly. It has to be really quick. "

" What I find remarkable is that so much of the 18th century literature that I read is more accessible than reading your alternative weekly from ten years ago. People really aspired to write clearly. "

Whit Stillman

Find

People

" I think sometimes it's the things you don't like that give you inspiration. "

Whit Stillman

Think

You

" If you're mostly a writer - if your point of departure is writing something - which for a writer/director is sort of where you start, you're really influenced by the writers you love one way or another. "

" There's certain key dance crazes that are just so much fun - wouldn't that be a great thing to do, to invent a dance? "

" Paris is the destination for brokenhearted American women. I think men go there and have their hearts broken, but women come there with their hearts broken. "