For a director, the most challenging scenes are the dialogue scenes.

Everyone has seen photographs of Mexicans wearing those big sombreros. When you come to Mexico, the astonishing thing is, nobody wears these hats at all.

When I was 24 I went to Nigeria and it was such a culture shock, growing up in Australia and suddenly being the only white man in this unit full of black men.

When the music and the characters are flawlessly synchronized, the opera develops an emotional force that movies and plays cannot match.

In Australia, they set up a special fund to kick films off. It was quite an enlightened sort of move. You could go to this government bureau with scripts and and get finance for films.

There were movies that always made me want to be a director. You see brilliant scenes and the way the emotions were handled. I thought, I'd really like to do that.

With a film, I do my best to understand the author's intentions and try to bring the characters to life.

Film is shot in fragments, and the same moments can be shot again and again until the director is satisfied.

The music of the most popular operas is so highly esteemed, it can stand endless revivals.

It's not enough to hit the notes. There is no point in the singers just standing there and sounding wonderful if they're not connecting with the characters they are portraying.

On stage, the audience watches from a fixed viewpoint and the director cannot retake something he doesn't like. It has to work straight through.

Love is like death, it must come to us all, but to each his own unique way and time, sometimes it will be avoided, but never can it be cheated, and never will it be forgotten.

When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat?

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul.

Lexicographers are language reporters.

What gives it its human character is that the individual through language addresses himself in the role of the others in the group and thus becomes aware of them in his own conduct.

Everybody is damaged goods. Everybody got bumps and dents, ja? But sometimes two people fit together, and the bumps go into the dents, and you have a whole thing like a potato.

Thus let me hold thee to my heart, And every care resign: And we shall never, never part, My life-my all that's mine!

Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know.

Nobody likes to be preached to.

Which can say more than this rich praise, that you alone are you?