At the end of the day, I like the spy genre, as opposed to the action movie genre, because spies are smart. The successful spies are the smarter spies.

That's why 'The Bourne Identity' has that sort of shaky style, because for the most part, Matt Damon and I were sneaking around Paris and shooting where we didn't have permits.

At the end of the day, it's still a show about guys who ride extremely fast motorcycles for a living.

I can't impress people with the pedigree of obscure French filmmakers that got me into film. It was Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. I really thought I wanted to make dumb action movies.

In movies, you can basically buy the audience into the theater. If you spend enough money on visual effects, even if you are lacking in story and character, you might still pull it off.

To be a lone filmmaker thousands of miles from home with nobody believing in me, that seems romantic.

I make movies for me and posterity. I'm more scared of history than I am of the studio.

If you do something that's really original, you discover why everybody else does it the other way, usually. There's a reason cliches exist, 'cause they work.

It's no secret that my process is a little bit loose and can be a little bit infuriating to a studio if they don't know what they're signing up for.

When I was shooting 'The Bourne Identity,' I had a mantra: 'How come you never see James Bond pay a phone bill?' It sounds trite, but it became the foundation of that franchise.

I probably shouldn't treat interviews as therapy sessions, but I don't keep a diary, so these end up being my way of keeping track of where I'm at and letting it all out.

The magic, grace, growth and wonder of life is that wisdom follows a fall and defeat not from a win.

At all times we are either in fear or we are in love. We are either open or we are closed. Expansive or contracted.

If you can hit a guy once, you can hit him twice.

I had some of the students in my finance class actually do some empirical work on capital structures, to see if we could find any obvious patterns in the data, but we couldn't see any.

-Most people would say that she's beautiful. -That's because she's been with most people.

Unfortunately the Republican tax cut will deny important revenues to many states facing their own deficits. This will create greater pressure for higher state and local taxes.

I don't have a story about an epiphany in which I suddenly realised I wanted to be an actor. It was much more a case of the idea dawning on me gradually.

In women everything is heart, even the head.

As soon as you see what you're looking at you have a name for it. You don't see it. The whole process of your thinking is not to see. You overcome sight by thinking.

Perhaps some day, modern people will learn that mystery is not the prison of the mind of people, it is their home.