As a filmmaker, I always took my inspiration from a filmmaker named Marcel Ophüls, who said, "I always have a point of view, but the trick is showing how hard it is to come to that point of view."

With every project I start out on, there's no footage. It's always a big slog to find the footage.

No one likes documentaries.

Jobs' incredible skill was as a storyteller, a salesman. He could captivate our imaginations and reel us in. He was more P.T. Barnum than Thomas Edison.

Fundamental problem in American democracy is that we are allowing congressmen and senators to be bought and sold like sneakers.

I come from a filmmaking tradition and a storytelling background. So somehow I've emerged like a mutant who can straddle both worlds.

It's easy to get armchair analysts to talk, but to get people on the inside to talk is very, very hard.

The stuff about film being a collaborative medium is no joke.

I think many articles in the New Yorker have a strong point of view, but they are so rigorously fact-checked. I wouldn't call them objective, but they feel fair.

As the power of governments wanes, corporations become ever more powerful. Sometimes they do things that aren't so good. We should pay attention.

You can't expect the institution to learn, if it doesn't accept any sense of justice.

The Christian shoemaker does his duty not by putting little crosses on the shoes, but by making good shoes, because God is interested in good craftsmanship.

I have a romantic side.

I'm an addict, I'm addicted to success. Thankfully, there's no rehab for success.

Genetics loads the gun, lifestyle pulls the trigger.

I wanted to analyze how unnecessary it is to collapse a heroine into one specific mold, to give them all the same sparkly fashion, the same tiny figures, and the same homogenized plastic smile.

But every once in a while, from out of the blue, someone reaches the quiet place where you spend your private time and changes the way you see yourself

Personally, I like those mystery shows. Ever since I was a kid I've been crazy about blood and detectives and murder. Maybe I was born with a silver knife in my back.

Trash is something you get rid of - or disease. I'm not something you get rid of.

Anyone who has been given the gift of being opposite an actor who gives and gives, it just makes you better.

My only friends were boys, and I was just one more of them.