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I think any spiritual experience that's worthwhile is not about ego and it will humble you in some way. And also, a Zen monk once said to me, 'If you're not laughing, then you're not getting it.'

David O. Russell

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David O. Russell
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: August 20
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Writer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Laughing
Getting
Spiritual
Experience
Monk
Also
Worthwhile
Way
Ego
Think
Humble
Thinking
Journey

More quotes by David O. Russell

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Unhappy endings can be as cheap as happy endings.
David O. Russell
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The romance is essential. I love the love. I don't love just people struggling. I love what people are struggling for. That moves me. I love watching people be loving, and I find it enchanting, magical and transporting. It's one of the reasons that I go to the movies, and that's why I like putting it in movies.
David O. Russell
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What we assert, very often can become our reality. To some degree, everybody can try to shape and control their fate. Everybody picks an identity.
David O. Russell
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I think sometimes you have to handle things delicately at work or at home. You know, you can find yourself in situations that are like opening a closet filled with bowling balls that are going to fall out of it, but if you handle things graciously, then that's not going to happen.
David O. Russell
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That's the most beautiful thing that I like about boxing: you can take a punch. The biggest thing about taking a punch is your ego reacts and there's no better spiritual lesson than trying to not pay attention to your ego's reaction.
David O. Russell
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Bush was in a shithole on September 10th. 9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to him.
David O. Russell
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I make every movie and every scene like it could be my last. That's the only way I know how to make cinema that stands on its feet. I have to treat it like that. It has to be life and death stakes.
David O. Russell
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The great lesson about filmmaking is never take no for an answer, especially if you have a lot of passion and inspiration to do something.
David O. Russell
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Every day, when my feet hit the ground, I have a story that I'm telling myself that I choose to make a positive story. I know people who don't do that, and there's a heavy energy around them. So I guess there's that kind of hustling.
David O. Russell
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The holy trifecta of directing and filmmaking is character emotion, camera movement and music. When you hit those three, that's magical. That's what I'm trying to do.
David O. Russell
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I would say that when I came into this chapter of my filmmaking career, starting with 'The Fighter,' there was this sense that you have to go from your instincts and you have to go from your gut, and you have to not hesitate and you have to not hedge.
David O. Russell
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The whole trick is to make it feel like you're spying on real people's lives as they get through the day. When I'm writing, I have to trick myself as a writer. If I consciously say, 'I'm writing,' I feel all this pressure and somehow it doesn't feel as real as when it doesn't seem to count as much.
David O. Russell
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I hadn't made that movie before and when I ever met the real Joy Mangano, which happened because De Niro insisted we meet her and her father, that's what she felt like to us. She impressed us with her quiet, serene authority with herself.
David O. Russell
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I think if religion closes discussion or exchange of ideas or curiosity about other views, it's not true to its core.
David O. Russell
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A thousand years ago, scientists who wondered about consciousness and the nature of reality were burned at the stake. We still haven't recovered from that and it's left us with a culture that no longer investigates consciousness, except on the fringes.
David O. Russell
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There's always hope. Never give up. Walk slowly and drink lots of water. It ain't a sprint.
David O. Russell
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And if you can come through that and still have some connection to your joy you felt when you were a child that's a very mature kind of a joy that I find inspiring. And Jennifer Lowrence has all that in her, and I've watched her have to go through it even in the last few years.
David O. Russell
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When most people turn on their TVs, they don't expect a frank discussion of philosophical ideas in their practical context. Or any context.
David O. Russell
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The Fighter was about a family struggling to overcome and fighting each other sometimes, and I went back and rewrote this script which I had written for my son initially because my son has mood disorder.
David O. Russell
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It's not easy to follow Jesus' example, and if you go to church it doesn't mean you're automatically doing it.
David O. Russell