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I've kind of come to the conclusion that what passes for realism in movies has nothing to do with reality and that my stuff is more realistic than that.

I don't believe in the deplorable notion of realism in the cinema: you can over-reach it, and it becomes as false as convention.

Realism is not a matter of any fidelity to an empirical reality, but of the discursive conventions by which and for which a sense of reality is constructed.

Realism is a bad word. In a sense everything is realistic. I see no line between the imaginary and the real.

When you make a film that is based in reality, reality will come up all around it.

The cinema that interests me departs from realism.

Realism isn't something most people associate with the fantasy genre, yet it's an essential element of great fantasy writing.

We need realism to deal with reality.

Realism hasn't fallen out of favor with most people, who are interested in people's lives rather than gymnastics of style or literary trends. It's a certain kind of academic who undervalues realism, largely because it is not amenable to endless exegesis.