But I suppose film is distinctive because of its nature, of its being able to cut through time with editing.
- Oliver Stone Quote

But in answer to your question about the conspiracy angle, I think that any historian worth his salt, and this is where I fault Stephen Ambrose and a lot of these guys who attack me - not all of life is a result of conspiracy by any means! Accident occurs alongside conspiracy.
- Oliver Stone Quote

Fear may very well be a caveman fear of the predator, of the giant lizard chasing them - maybe that's what Steven Spielberg connects with so well in Lost World.
- Oliver Stone Quote

I am not trying to be a historian and a dramatist; I'm a dramatist, a dramatic historian, or one who does a dramatic interpretation of history.
- Oliver Stone Quote

I do believe there are leaders who are like lightning and they come along and they lead. The Lincolns of the world, the Alexander the Greats, they do exist. They have existed.
- Oliver Stone Quote

I have the right to interpretation as a dramatist. I research. It's my responsibility to find the research. It's my responsibility to digest it and do the best that I can with it. But at a certain point that responsibility will become an interpretation.
- Oliver Stone Quote

I never put out a history, I put out a dramatic history.
- Oliver Stone Quote

I think experience will teach you a combination of liberalism and conservatism. We have to be progressive and at the same time we have to retain values. We have to hold onto the past as we explore the future.
- Oliver Stone Quote

I will come out with my interpretation. If I'm wrong, fine. It will become part of the debris of history, part of the give and take.
- Oliver Stone Quote

I would vote for the man who's lived life, who's done different occupations, who's been out in the real world and struggled to make a living, struggled to raise a family, struggled with life as it exists. So I'd vote for experience, honest experience.
- Oliver Stone Quote

I'm terrible at horror movies, by the way. I get scared so easily.
- Oliver Stone Quote

I've been to war, and it's not easy to kill. It's bloody and messy and totally horrifying, and the consequences are serious.
- Oliver Stone Quote

I've met people who will go to a movie that I can't stand and they say that they saw that movie ten times. There's something they like and identified in that movie, and I don't see it.
- Oliver Stone Quote

In any film there's always a historical implication.
- Oliver Stone Quote

It's interesting that when economic times were the hardest, that's when many people embraced liberalism.
- Oliver Stone Quote

Never underestimate the power of jealousy and the power of envy to destroy. Never underestimate that.
- Oliver Stone Quote

One of my fantasies in my life has been that I was granted access with a camera to go back in time, and to film the actual campaign of Alexander crossing into India through Iran and Persia.
- Oliver Stone Quote

One of the joys of going to the movies was that it was trashy, and we should never lose that.
- Oliver Stone Quote

Well first of all you have to make the character strong so that people can follow that. And then hopefully that character can integrate with the background of the social situation that people can recognize.
- Oliver Stone Quote

When I was a child, I'd see a movie, I took it for what it was, I enjoyed it. And if I believed it I would tend to be more interested in knowing more about it.
- Oliver Stone Quote

When you look at a movie, you look at a director's thought process.
- Oliver Stone Quote

You do the best job you can. You take it step by step. It's hard enough to make a movie. If it works, that's great. If it means something beyond the moment to somebody, they can take it and it lasts through the years, we'll see.
- Oliver Stone Quote