Daily Inspiration Quote by Richard King

The line lands like a disclaimer delivered before the contracts hit the table: Richard King insisting he is not for sale, even as he works in an industry built to price everything. “Yet” does the heavy lifting. It implies a conversation already underway about budgets, box office, back-end points, maybe a recent project that looked suspiciously like a paycheck job. He’s not denying money matters; he’s distancing himself from the idea that money should be the organizing principle.

The phrase “purely for the money” is a careful hedge, not a romantic vow of poverty. It grants that money is always in the room - crews need wages, financiers need returns, directors need leverage - while still protecting a self-image: artist first, operator second. That’s the subtext filmmakers often have to perform publicly, because audiences want authenticity and studios want reliability. In a culture that treats “selling out” as both moral failure and inevitable career step, King’s sentence functions as brand management: a way to keep credibility with cinephiles while remaining employable inside a commercial machine.

There’s also a quiet power play here. By stating a refusal, he signals optionality. Only directors with some momentum can credibly claim they’ll walk away from a lucrative offer. So the quote is less a confession than a positioning move: I choose projects; projects don’t buy me. The intent isn’t to shame profit, but to frame profit as a byproduct of taste, ambition, and a personal threshold of meaning.