For me, certain shots or scenes are keys in the movie.

Listen, you make a big movie, you're going into the Coliseum, and people are going to give you the thumbs up or the thumbs down. And that's part of the game. It's part of the fun as well.

When I drive through a field, I want to see green grass sometimes, and I don't want to see black and white.

Confidence is essential, but ego is not.

You've got to work. You've got to want an audience to sit forward in their chairs sometimes, rather than sit back and be bombarded with images.

Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.

Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.

I think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.

You think about taking audiences on a journey.

You've got to believe as a filmmaker that if a movie's good enough, it's going to survive; and if it's not, well, it won't.

This is the first time in 10 years I don't know what I'm doing next and I'm rather enjoying it. Soon I'll be climbing the walls no doubt, but right now, it's not clear, I'm just enjoying the freedom.

I do not know anything about ‘all the good guys are taken’ but I certainly know none of the beautiful girls are virgin.

I'm thankful my parents obliged me to live with the unvarnished truth: I might not have been a looker, but I was a better speller than the prettiest girl in my class, and I was funnier, too.

The laws of thought are also the laws of things: of things in the remotest space and the remotest time.

Ordering a man to write a poem is like commanding a pregnant woman to give birth to a red-headed child.

You can't start taking away benefits if people don't have any opportunities.

Every leader wants to put his or her imprint on the work that they do, and grow up in specific eras.

I don't even own a cell phone.

The easiest way to do something is properly.

A cold in the head in June is an immoral thing.

Falling in love as we know it is an addictive experience.