22 Fascinating Christopher Nolan Quotes

This article was last updated on March 20, 2018

Christopher Nolan is an innovative movie writer-director who has made a few early 21st century biggest hits like Memento, Inception, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar, and Dunkirk. I believe he is the best director currently working in Hollywood. I’ve gathered these great Christoper Nolan quotes so you can see the mind of a genius at work.

During his 15 years of movie-making, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the biggest blockbusters. How did achieve that?

Christopher Nolan, born on July 30, 1970, in London, England, made his first film at the age of 7. He became widely known for his early movies, Following (1998) and Memento (2000). After directing Insomnia, his next film was Batman Begins (2005), a new take on the comic-book franchise that became a global hit. Its sequel, The Dark Knight (2008), broke box office records, earning $1.005 billion.

Nolan’s sci-fi thriller, Inception, became a blockbuster, earning $828 million. In 2012, he produced the third film of his Batman saga, The Dark Knight Rises. Nolan followed with the epic space drama Interstellar in 2014 and the World War II film Dunkirk in 2017.

With his unique approach to storytelling and his incredible attention to detail, Christoper Nolan captivated audiences time and time again. Great actors such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey, Christian Bale and Tom Hardy have appeared in multiple Nolan films with incredible performances. Even the music in his movies alone can hypnotize you.

If you haven’t watched any of the movies listed above, you absolutely should.

22 Fascinating Christopher Nolan Quotes

“A hero can be anyone, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat on a young boy’s shoulders to let him know the world hadn’t ended.“ – Christopher Nolan
“Breaking rules isn’t interesting. It’s making up new ones that keeps things exciting.” – Christopher Nolan
“You musn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.“ – Christopher Nolan
“I’ve been fascinated by dreams my whole life, since I was a kid, and I think the relationship between movies and dreams is something that’s always interested me.“ – Christopher Nolan
“You’re never going to learn something as profoundly as when it’s purely out of curiosity.“ – Christopher Nolan Quotes
“I’ve always believed that if you want to really try and make a great film, not a good film, but a great film, you have to take a lot of risks.” – Christopher Nolan
“You need time. And that doesn’t mean necessarily even working full-time on it itself; it means time to throw some ideas together and then let them sit, go off and do something else, come back and see what still feels right and everything.” – Christopher Nolan
“Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves back up.“ – Christopher Nolan
“I think there’s a vague sense out there that movies are becoming more and more unreal. I know I’ve felt it.” – Christopher Nolan
“One of the things you do as a writer and as a filmmaker is grasp for resonant symbols and imagery without necessarily fully understanding it yourself.“ – Christopher Nolan
“Keep trying to do great work.” – Christopher Nolan
“People want to see something that shows them you can do what you say. That’s the trick.“ – Christopher Nolan
“I have been interested in dreams, really since I was a kid. I have always been fascinated by the idea that your mind, when you are asleep, can create a world in a dream and you are perceiving it as though it really existed.“ – Christopher Nolan
“The real truth of that is that much as you want to believe that it’s you being on top of everything, you’re actually relying massively on the people around you.“ – Christopher Nolan
“We all wake up in the morning wanting to live our lives the way we know we should. But we usually don’t, in small ways. That’s what makes a character like Batman so fascinating. He plays out our conflicts on a much larger scale.“ – Christopher Nolan
“By the time I was 10 or 11, I knew I wanted to make films.“ – Christopher Nolan
“I sometimes think how strange it is that I’ve got to do exactly what I want, and that is difficult to cope with. You have to remind yourself every few weeks: I’m making this film and this is exactly what I want to do. And suddenly you’re happy again.“ – Christopher Nolan
Read also: The 15 Most Badass Harvey Specter Quotes
“I never considered myself a lucky person. I’m the most extraordinary pessimist. I truly am.“ – Christopher Nolan
“You never quite know what you’re going to come back to and figure out how to make it work. You never quite know where that desire to finish something, or return to something in a fresh way, is going to come from. Every time I finished a film and went back and looked at it, I had changed as a person.“ – Christopher Nolan Quotes
“I try to be as efficient as possible because in my process, I think that actually helps the work. I like having the pressure of time and money and really trying to stick to the parameters we’ve been given.“ – Christopher Nolan
“When you start really thinking about the potential of the human mind and its ability to create an entire world while you’re sleeping, I come away feeling like our minds are not remotely understood by science.“ – Christopher Nolan
“The best actors instinctively feel out what the other actors need, and they just accommodate it.” – Christopher Nolan