Insuperable and Extraordinary

"Most people don't know what they want or feel. And for everyone, myself included, Its very difficult to say what you mean when what you mean is painful. The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to... As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad - to be willing to risk everything to really express it all."

"I like to feel pain through what really causes pain. I don't want to frighten people by showing them tragedy. I've never seen an exploding helicopter, I've never seen anybody go and blow somebody's head off. So why should I make films about them? But I have seen people destroy themselves in the smallest possible way. I've seen people withdraw. I've seen people hide behind political ideas, behind dope, behind the sexual revolution, behind fascism, behind hypocrisy, and I've myself done all these things. In our films what we are saying is so gentle. It's gentleness. We have problems, terrible problems, but our problems are human problems."

"Life is a series of events to avert being exposed as a fool. But in the effort to do this we make even bigger fools of ourselves. Most of us like to think we know how to handle life, but, actually, we are ignorant emotionally. We have to learn not to be so hard on ourselves. I'm obsessed with the idea that people are human and have fallacies, and that those embarrassing fallacies are better out in the open. That way we don't waste time covering up. I see life as a struggle, and the real romance is in not walking away from it… The point is to struggle to explore avenues of understanding to the greatest extent possible. That is a great mystery of life."

John Cassavetes

http://people.bu.edu/rcarney/cassavetes/