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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Xavier Dolan Quotes

For me, hipsterism is for one to appropriate the codes of a social class or another milieu that wasn’t theirs originally, in order to define their personality through something different and unique. Which is why a lot of hipsters live downtown, and they’re dressed as farmers. Then you have the Oscar Wilde hipster: the dandy.

– Xavier Dolan

The problems I have with a flawed script are always revealed in the editing room.

– Xavier Dolan

That I am today the face of Louis Vuitton almost seems like a twist of fate. You dream back to front, wanting the rewards before putting the work in. And then you work, get on with life, and just sometimes these childhood dreams have a way of catching up with you. This is a true privilege for which I am eternally grateful.

– Xavier Dolan

I hadn’t watched any Hitchcock movies when I made ‘Tom at the Farm,’ except for ‘Vertigo’ when I was 8 years old. I don’t have a sophisticated film knowledge, but I have seen the legacy of classic movies in broader entertainment.

– Xavier Dolan

When you’re adapting, you are working on someone else’s problem that they have already solved. The work has been fine-tuned and read countless times, and you’re just arriving at the end and taking what you want, so of course it is the regal way to moviemaking. Plays are just the ideal scripts – the structure is there and waiting for you.

– Xavier Dolan

Film-making is not liberating. It drains a lot out of you, and it’s fulfilling only temporarily. It’s a very thankless thing at times. When you’re spending all that time on a film, you don’t want 40,000 people to see it – it’s just not enough. You dream of more.

– Xavier Dolan

My aunt Julie was a production manager, and she heard of an opening. Some show was looking for children to run around the house or whatever. I auditioned and got the part, and I showed up in all of my monstrous energy, bouncing everywhere like an electron.

– Xavier Dolan

It’s important to see how people see your work and how they feel about it. I know a lot of directors who are like, ‘I never read reviews,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah I can tell.’

– Xavier Dolan

Homosexuality is like an inside baseball thing. It’s like a gag that people share; ‘How is your husband?’ But when it comes to bringing diversity to a broader audience, suddenly it’s a different road. It’s what we call ‘a risk.’ Isn’t it our responsibility to elevate the standards and change people’s perceptions?

– Xavier Dolan

I’ve been recording forever. I’m a watcher. I’m a stalker. I love everything about people. It’s always been a passion for me to observe.

– Xavier Dolan

I don’t really mind not being a part of a film – because if there is no part for me, I will never force myself upon a film. I feel like it’s just a distraction. If it is not organically incorporated into the story, it just feels like a stupid appearance, like a sort of wink. I hate that.

– Xavier Dolan

I feel like Adele is a diva. Not in the bad way. She is one of the greatest voices of this industry and of her own art. What she offers is so unique that she’s risen to such a status that very few artists can enjoy.

– Xavier Dolan

There might be a proper age to know how to tell a story, but there’s no proper age to start telling them.

– Xavier Dolan

My extreme characters are in a state of rebellion or who are being ostracized or being misunderstood, or misfits or trying to fit in and fighting for their rights to love, live, and co-exist. They sort of mirror my own demons.

– Xavier Dolan

I got a part in a package of commercials for this big drugstore from the age of 6 to 10. For four years I shot those commercials, and old ladies would stop me on the street and grab my cheeks. That’s how it started.

– Xavier Dolan

Sometimes I find it tiresome to write actions and describe the scene in a very intricate way so that every crew member understands where we are going – that I can find a little bit long and tiresome. But dialogue is just all my life. There’s no way I could ever be challenged, not challenged, but I’m always so happy to write dialogue.

– Xavier Dolan

It was a privilege to direct the music video for Adele’s beautiful, heartbreaking song, ‘Hello.’ When I first heard it, all the images appeared clearly in my head – and her trust and generosity allowed me to work with abandon artistically and emotionally, like she always does. It made me extremely proud.

– Xavier Dolan

We are all different human beings, and we all have different backgrounds, and we stem from different social strata. That is what defines how you hear people talk, how you want to quote them when you speak. We all have different fears and doubts and complexes and this is what shapes the way we see other people. Especially characters.

– Xavier Dolan

I’ve fondly dreamed of becoming the face of an important brand since I was a child, in the same way that others dream of becoming an astronaut. I dreamed of this as I first and foremost dreamed of becoming an actor and would look up at these huge posters of celebrities while driving along motorways or crossing under bridges.

– Xavier Dolan

I don’t personally do movies for myself and a faction of very cerebral cinephiles – I do it for everybody and wish for the largest amount of people to relish whatever they find they can relish in.

– Xavier Dolan

Orson Welles was lazy. He was a late bloomer.

– Xavier Dolan

I love doing costumes. The costume is an actor’s first line, so it’s gotta be right!

– Xavier Dolan

When I first got to Cannes, I was very insecure about everything, so I put on this extravagant facade. Can you blame me? I was 19.

– Xavier Dolan

The scene of independent cinema is already a large scene in America, and not in a negative way, but it’s cluttered. It’s very populated with just American films, so the room left for foreign movies is not extremely vast. The American public also does not really read. They don’t read subtitles. But we’re like that in Canada, too.

– Xavier Dolan

I was a very violent kid. I think movies and writing and art have been a way of channeling this.

– Xavier Dolan

All my life, I heard, ‘Stop daydreaming,’ ‘Get over yourself,’ ‘You’ll never get there,’ ‘Aim lower,’ ‘You’ll hurt yourself,’ from teachers, family, and friends.

– Xavier Dolan

To me, the idea of success is to be able to work with people you admire.

– Xavier Dolan

I don’t have mom issues or dad issues. I think I have found peace about many things in my past. I have forgiven and asked to be forgiven.

– Xavier Dolan

The nature and the DNA of IMAX has been redefined in the past years to shoot these huge blockbusters. But I think that it’s not the sole purpose of IMAX to capture cars exploding in your face.

– Xavier Dolan

In ‘Laurence Anyways,’ Nathalie Baye is Laurence’s mother, and she is quite an awful mother. Still, she is the only one in the end who truly accepts her daughter.

– Xavier Dolan

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