Quotes

[quoted by G.W. Bitzer in "Billy Bitzer: His Story."] A film without a message is just a waste of time.

[Instructions Griffith allegedly gave to his assistants during the making of one of his epics, quoted by Josef von Sternberg in his memoir "Fun in a Chinese Laundry"] Move these 10,000 horses a trifle to the right, and that mob out there three feet forward.

There will never be talking pictures.

Talkies, squeakies, moanies, songies, squawkies . . . Just give them ten years to develop and you're going to see the greatest artistic medium the world has known.

Actors should never be important. Only directors should have power and place.

Everything went downhill after Lillian [Lillian Gish] left me.

[on what people associated with silent films] The good old American faculty of wanting to be shown things.

I made them see, didn't I? I changed everything.

Remember how small the world was before I came along? I brought it all to life: I moved the whole world onto a 20-foot screen.

Movies are written in sand: applauded today, forgotten tomorrow.

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences? What art? What science?

[on Douglas Fairbanks] He has such verve. He can use his body.

We do not want now and we never shall want the human voice with our films. Music -- fine music -- will always be the voice of the silent drama.

[on James Mason] That Mason is the greatest actor.

[on sound movies] It is my arrogant belief that we have lost beauty.

[on Mary Pickford] She never stopped listening and learning.

[to Mary Pickford] You're too little and too fat, but I might give you a job.

[on being honored at the 1935 Academy Awards ceremony] We had many worries in those days, small worries. Now you people have your worries and they are big ones. They have grown with the business - and no matter what its problems, it's the greatest business in the world.