Every religion, in my opinion, has something to bring, and I think we all learn from everyone that there's no right, perfect way to look at something.

One of the great things about being a director as a life choice is that it can never be mastered. Every story is its own kind of expedition, with its own set of challenges.

Confidence is preparation in action.

If I had to choose between a great acting job and a good directing job, I'd choose the directing job.

Humor is unavoidable. It might not feel funny in the moment, but more often than not there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

Death can be experienced once, winning maybe more, but losing can happen all the time.

I've just looked for ideas and great characters that I relate to and that I think I can offer something to the audience, and I no longer look at them as experiments or genre exercises at all.

I think the most important thing really was that you could take very personal ideas and present them to an audience in entertaining ways.

There's a very real argument that the minute we are capable of going to a planet, whether it's Mars or another one, and inhabiting it, that we really should.

I'm not a caterer. I just have to stay with my creative convictions. At some point, you have to just get past the special-interest groups and do what you're there to do, which is make a movie.

You're always a little surprised when something really takes off.

There is no denial that the lack of self-love conditions many to feel unimportant or irrelevant.

There was something built into the human brain by natural selection which was once useful, and which now manifests itself as religion.

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

I'm not the type of player to sit home and practice scales and work on runs.

I was always a big reader, even when everything was bad and miserable.

Increasingly, poor minority and white youth are being funneled directly from schools into prison.

If sexuality is one dimension of our ability to live passionately in the world then in cutting off our sexual feelings we diminish our overall power to feel know and value deeply.

I feel like I experienced my 20s in all their glory and all their disastrousness.

The Christian religion begins with a dream and ends with a murder.

My life is unjust, but I can strive for justice. My life is unkind, but I can vote for kindness.