89 Quentin Tarantino Quotes on Filmmaking, Life and Success

Quentin Tarantino, born on March 27, 1963, in Knoxville, Tennessee, is a famous American director and screenwriter known for his unique style filled with neo-noir violence, sharp dialogue and a deep appreciation for film and pop culture.

Before rising to fame, Tarantino worked at a video store in California.

He first made waves in the film industry with “Reservoir Dogs” in 1992, about a jewelry heist gone wrong.

His big break came with “Pulp Fiction” in 1994, a film with intertwining crime stories that earned him an Academy Award for best original screenplay.

Quentin Tarantino

Over the years, Tarantino has created numerous notable films like “Kill Bill,” “Django Unchained,” and “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.”

Besides directing, he has also acted and produced and in 2021, he released a novel based on his film “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.”

I have selected the most famous quotes by Quentin Tarantino.


Best Quentin Tarantino Quotes

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I didn’t go to film school, I went to films. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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I steal from every movie ever made. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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There are two ways: my way and the highway. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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You know what the funniest thing about Europe is? It’s the little differences. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I want to have the fun of doing anime and I love anime, but I can’t do storyboards because I can’t really draw and that’s what they live and die on. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, ‘no, I went to films.’ ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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I don’t think there’s anything to be afraid of. Failure brings great rewards – in the life of an artist. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I’ve always wanted to work with Warren Beatty. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Violence is fun, man. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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If you just love movies enough, you can make a good one. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Batman is not a very interesting character. For any actor. There is simply not much to play. I think Michael Keaton did it the best, and I wish good luck to Ben Affleck. But, you know who would have made a great Batman? Alec Baldwin in the ’80s. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I like it when somebody tells me a story, and I actually really feel that that’s becoming like a lost art in American cinema. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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Critics don’t want to see directors they like make too much of a left turn. That’s good for criticism. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

There’s only one list that’s more illustrious than the list of directors who won the Palme d’Or. It’s the list of directors who didn’t. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Inspiring Quentin Tarantino Quotes

Don’t write what you think people want to read. Find your voice and write about what’s in your heart. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

If you’re trying to drop ten pages from a screenplay, it hurts like hell, but if you just put it away for a month and then take it out, you can do it just like that! ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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Everything I learned as an actor, I have basically applied to writing. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

You don’t have to know how to make a movie. If you truly love cinema with all your heart and with enough passion, you can’t help but make a good movie. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I write movies about mavericks, about people who break rules, and I don’t like movies about people who are pulverized for being mavericks. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Just because you are a character doesn’t mean you have character. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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If a Million People See My Movie, I Hope They See a Million Different Movies. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I try not to get analytical in the writing process. I try to just kind of keep the flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and go with the moment and go with my guts. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I couldn’t spell anything. I couldn’t remember anything, but I could go to a movie and I knew who starred in it, who directed it, everything. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

The children despise their parents until the age of when they suddenly become just like them – thus preserving the system. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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Sergio Leone was a big influence on me because of the spaghetti westerns. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I’ll write for a while and then I’ll find an appropriate song and in a weird way the music will keep me in the mood. I find music to define the mood of the movie, the rhythm the movie is going to play in. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Movies are not about the weekend that they’re released, and in the grand scheme of things, that’s probably the most unimportant time of a film’s life. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

To me, Godard did to movies what Bob Dylan did to music: they both revolutionized their forms. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Famous Quentin Tarantino Quotes

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I am not going to tell you how I believe, but I do believe in God. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

There are a lot of bad screenplays so if you write a good screenplay people are going to respond to it. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

One of the things about writing a novel is you can do it any way you want. It’s your voice that’s important and I see absolutely no reason why a screenplay can’t be the same. It makes it a hell of a lot easier when you’re the writer and the director. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I’m very happy with the way I write. I think I do it good. But I’ve never really considered myself a writer. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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To me, torture would be watching sports on television. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

If you love cinema as much as I do, and not many people do, and if you are focused and actually have something to offer, you will get somewhere with it. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

It’s nice to get invited to the parties and to be able to hobnob and celebrate a job well done with your colleagues. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I’ve always considered myself a filmmaker who writes stuff for himself to do. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

The good ideas will survive. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I don’t want to be an old-man filmmaker, making old-man movies, and I don’t want to be the one not to know when to leave the party. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Top Quentin Tarantino Quotes

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I don’t judge my characters, and that’s my job not to judge them. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Something stopped me in school a little bit. Anything that I’m not interested in, I can’t even feign interest. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I’ve always equated the writing process with editing, sort of like when I get through editing the movie, that’s like my last draft of the screenplay. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

If I wasn’t a film-maker, I’d be a film critic. It’s the only thing I’d be qualified to do. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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I’m a historian in my own mind. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Sure, and that’s the cool thing about DVD: you can pack stuff on the disc that would’ve been too much for the big screen because actually it would’ve only interested yourself and a bunch of fanboys, who wanna know everything. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

CGI has fully ruined car crashes. Because how can you be impressed with them now? When you watch them in the ’70s, it was real cars, real metal, real blasts. They’re really doing it and risking their lives. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I surprised myself, that I was in the tissue of the character enough, that I could actually come up with something that I didn’t actually feel or didn’t believe. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

To me, truth is the big thing. Constantly you’re writing something and you get to a place where your characters could go this way or that and I just can’t lie. The characters have gotta be true to themselves. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Popular Quentin Tarantino Quotes

I don’t have any bone to pick with critics. In fact, if I wasn’t a filmmaker I would probably be a film critic. Most of my bone is I would be a better film critic than most of the film critics I read. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I definitely have some colleagues that I respect, and we get together from time to time. But I actually have just like genuine friends. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I have loved movies as the number one thing in my life so long that I can’t ever remember a time when I didn’t. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I hope to give you at least 15 more years of movies. I’m not going to be this old guy that keeps cranking them out. My plan is to have a theater by that time in some small town and I will be the manager this crazy old movie guy. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

If you want to make a movie, make it. Don’t wait for a grant, don’t wait for the perfect circumstances, just make it. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

The way I write is really like putting one foot in front of the other. I really let the characters do most of the work, they start talking and they just lead the way. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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Violence is one of the most fun things to watch. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

If I really considered myself a writer, I wouldn’t be writing screenplays. I’d be writing novels. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I’m a big collector of vinyl – I have a record room in my house – and I’ve always had a huge soundtrack album collection. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I don’t think Pulp Fiction is hard to watch at all. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Great Quentin Tarantino Quotes

Violence in real life is terrible; violence in movies can be cool. It’s just another colour to work with. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I don’t believe in elitism. I don’t think the audience is this dumb person lower than me. I am the audience. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Just because I was at an anti-police brutality protest, doesn’t mean I’m anti-police. We want justice, but stop shooting unarmed people. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Emotion will always win over coolness and cleverness. It’s when a scene works emotionally and it’s cool and clever, then it’s great. That’s what you want. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Novelists have always had complete freedom to pretty much tell their story any way they saw fit. And that’s what I’m trying to do. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I won’t even think about acting in a role where I didn’t do a back story for a character. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

You name any horrific thing, and I can make a joke out of it. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I’m not a Hollywood basher because enough good movies come out of the Hollywood system every year to justify its existence, without any apologies. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

He musta thought it was white boy day. It ain’t white boy day, is it? ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I always do an all-night horror marathon on Saturdays where we start at seven and go until five in the morning. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I was trying to do like a Spaghetti Western but using World War II iconography. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I’m not writing novels, the screenplays are my novels, so I’m gonna write it the best that I can. If the movie never gets made, it’d almost be okay because I did it. It’s there on the page. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Wise Quentin Tarantino Quotes

You can’t write poetry on the computer. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I laugh all the time. I’m an easy laugher. You can find me on any set, because I’m always laughing. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

When I’m writing something, I try not to get analytical about it as I’m doing it, as I’m writing it. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Dogs got personality. Personality goes a long way. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I am a genre lover – everything from spaghetti western to samurai movie. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I am a writer, I deal in words. There is no word that should stay in word jail, every word is completely free. There is no word that is worse than another word. It’s all language, it’s all communication. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

In real life there are no bad guys. Everybody just has their own perspective. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

You should be semi-embarrassed about certain people seeing your movie. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Everybody always talks about the science fiction genre, in particular, which always makes me think about people in spaceships. I can appreciate that, but that’s not really where I think my dramatist aspect lies. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

Thought-Provoking Quentin Tarantino Quotes

I want to top expectations. I want to blow you away. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

If I’m doing my job right, then I’m not writing the dialogue; the characters are saying the dialogue, and I’m just jotting it down. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

When you gotta go out and make a movie to pay for the kid’s private school and for the three ex-wives, don’t talk to me about your artistry. It’s their job. It’s not my job. It’s my calling. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I loved history because to me, history was like watching a movie. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I’m writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I’m going to play for the opening sequence. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

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All my movies are achingly personal. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

If there is something magic about the collaborations I have with actors it’s because I put the character first. ~ Quentin Tarantino.

I like my song-sequences in my movies, but one of the things I like about them is I get in and I get out. ~ Quentin Tarantino.


So these were the 89 top Quentin Tarantino quotes and sayings about movies, life, pulp fiction, films and writing.

If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Zlatan Ibrahimovic quotes and Yung Pueblo quotes.

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Chandan Negi
Chandan Negi

I’m the Founder of Internet Pillar - I love sharing quotes and motivational content to inspire and motivate people - #quotes #motivation #internetpillar