Fincher: "I was a disinterested student."

Fincher: "Some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything's okay. I don't make those kinds of movies."

Fincher: "For a number of years, I'd been around the kind of people who financed movies and the kind of people who are there to make the deals for movies. But I'd always had this naive idea that everybody wants to make movies as good as they can be, which is stupid."

Fincher: "My idea of professionalism is probably a lot of people's idea of obsessive."

Fincher: "You know, I don't think I've ever listened to someone's commentary. Ever."

Fincher: "There are some movies I can watch over and over, never get sick of. I'll put one of those on and be puttering around the house. Then a certain scene will come on and I'll just have to go over and watch."

Fincher: "I learn the most from making my own mistakes."

Fincher: "A movie is made for an audience and a film is made for both the audience and the film-makers."

Fincher: "When I'm watching somebody act, it's a behavior editorial function - I look at someone act, and I might say, 'I don't believe him when he says that.' I don't know why I don't believe him, probably because the people that I've met, they don't act like that when they say stuff like that and mean it."

Fincher: "Hollywood is great. I also think it's stupid and small-minded and shortsighted."

Fincher: "In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behaviour and we sculpt light."

Fincher: "Oh, yeah, I love DVD's. I don't have what you'd call an extensive collection, maybe a couple of hundred or so. But I have something on almost all the time."

Fincher: "Everything seems really simple on paper until you take a camera out of the box."

Fincher: "I think intelligence is totally subjective; it's like sexiness."