My strength, if it's anything, is that I can lure some big-name actors in. That's probably the strength of almost any director now. On your own, as a director, you've only got so much weight. James Cameron, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Michael Bay... that's about it. Everybody else depends on the star power that they can draw.

Terry Gilliam

I've given up asking questions. l merely float on a tsunami of acceptance of anything life throws at me ... and marvel stupidly.

Terry Gilliam

asking-questions given acceptance

Reality and fantasy, we need both of those to survive. If we don't have fantasy, dreams and all of those things, what's the point of carrying on? And you need to watch out for reality because buses come.

Terry Gilliam

dream watches reality

I just like the fact I can make a film which might give comfort to some people who think they are the only crazy person in the world and suddenly they see there are two crazy people in the world.

Terry Gilliam

crazy two thinking

Well, I really want to encourage a kind of fantasy, a kind of magic. I love the term magic realism, whoever invented it – I do actually like it because it says certain things. It's about expanding how you see the world. I think we live in an age where we're just hammered, hammered to think this is what the world is. Television's saying, everything's saying 'That's the world.' And it's not the world. The world is a million possible things.

Terry Gilliam

magic-realism age thinking

I'm a cartoonist, it's what I am at heart, so cartoons take reality and deform it and make it grotesque, you make it funny, but you alter it. If it works, it's based on reality. That's what I try to do.

Terry Gilliam

cartoon heart reality

What I want to do is make films that astonish people, that astound people, and I hope you want to do that too. It's easy to make money. It's easy to make films like everybody else. But to make films that explode like grenades in people's heads and leave shrapnel for the rest of their lives is a very important thing. That's what the great filmmakers did for me. I've got images from Fellini, from Bergman, from Kurowsawa, from Bunuel, all stuck in my brain.

Terry Gilliam

important brain people

I don't think you ever learn just one thing. At some point you start unlearning things. I have been working hard to unlearn everything I know.

Terry Gilliam

has-beens knows thinking

Gorillaz virtually changed my wife...sorry, I mean, life...no, actually, it was my wife.

Terry Gilliam

wife sorry mean

Whatever I do might be good, it might be bad, it might be all sorts of things, but it's not mediocre.

Terry Gilliam

mediocre be-good might

I do want to say things in these films. I want audiences to come out with shards stuck in them. I don't care if people love my films or walk out, as long as they have a strong response.

Terry Gilliam

strong long people

I was an incredible Anglophile. I found people who shared the same sense of humor and attitude toward the world.

Terry Gilliam

attitude people world

I've always sworn that not having enough money has saved me from mediocrity.

Terry Gilliam

mediocrity saved enough

If you really want your films to say something that you hope is unique, then patience and stamina, thick skin and a kind of stupidity, a mule-like stupidity, is what you really need.

Terry Gilliam

stupidity skins unique

I can feel my dreams but I can't remember them.

Terry Gilliam

dream feels remember

Because I dislike being quoted I lie almost constantly when talking about my work.

Terry Gilliam

dislike talking lying

Fantasy isn't just a jolly escape: It's an escape, but into something far more extreme than reality, or normality. It's where things are more beautiful and more wondrous and more terrifying. You move into a world of conflicting extremes.

Terry Gilliam

beautiful reality moving

I'm trying to escape by forming my own kind of world. Basically, I'm trying to encourage others to do the same.

Terry Gilliam

kind trying world

I'm overwhelmed by writers. Most people aren't impressed by writers, but if you can draw a cartoon or a picture, they think you're magic.

Terry Gilliam

magic people thinking

All films are learning processes. I am still trying to work out how you make a movie. I didn't study at film school or any of those things. I didn't bother with film theory.

Terry Gilliam

work-out trying school

A lot of people seem to get carried away that something that's made out of paper mâché is going to be better than not. And I always thought the original King Kong, that terrible little puppet with its hair going in all directions, was far more magical than Peter Jackson's incredibly beautifully rendered King Kong. So there's something to be said for a more primitive version of things. I think it's because it makes the audience work a little bit more, because you've got to invest it with life and reality, so I like doing that.

Terry Gilliam

reality people thinking