Each time I make a movie, it's like a paid scholarship to a different university course.

There's no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there's no excuse for boredom, ever.

I have never been in a natural place and felt that it was a waste of time. I never have. And it's a relief. If I'm walking around a desert or whatever, every second is worthwhile.

It's hard not to get depressed when you pay attention to the world and how strangely and corrupt the people in it sometimes behave.

When I have a day off, I won't spend it at a Hollywood party. I'd rather be at home with paints and a blank canvas.

You should always do the things in life that are both interesting and make you afraid.

Be kind. It's worthwhile to make an effort to learn about other people and figure out what you might have in common with them.

You don't have to make something that people call art. Living is an artistic activity, there is an art to getting through the day.

I think that every person has many, many people inside of them. We change our personality depending on who we are talking to or what situation we are in.

I think every family is dysfunctional, and some manage to control it better than others.

My job as an artist, as I see it, is to understand and in some cases to take on various ways of thinking about people and the world that are different from my own, sometimes radically different.

A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.

He should have known. She was the only wanna be immortal he’d ever known.

The white folks like for us to be religious, then they can do what they want to with us.

I have this obsession with really cool, old books.

I always wanted to see people's lives transformed from depression and anxiety to joy and peace.

The one thing about music is that there are no rules.

I am a homophobe, though a mild and tolerant one, and a racist, though an even more mild and tolerant one, and those things are going to be illegal pretty soon, the way we are going.

You get below the Mason-Dixon line and you have some of the best music, culture, the two races, the literature, and it's so rich.

The body is consuming energy when tense, and restoring energy when it is relaxed.

I had no taste for defeat - much less victory - without a fight.