Germans try to categorize films: in a comedy, you just laugh and in a drama, you're not allowed to laugh. I don't believe in that, sometimes we laugh and cry in the same hour.

When an audience is laughing, that's opening their souls somehow, and when you have an audience with an open soul, it's much better to hit them with a knife.

Whenever I'm making a feature film, I wish I were filming a documentary, because making feature films is so stressful. It happens every time.

I like it when actors depart from the script to find their characters.

Maybe every two films you need to do documentary to tell what you really want to tell and not be limited by the medium. With documentary you don't create the reality you have to hunt the reality.

Fiction is my home, I came from fiction, I like to tell stories.

I don't like violence in movies, I'm not a kind of Tarantino fan. But sometimes it's necessary.

As a director, you can transform your vision more with the music.

I always listen to music when I write, I need a rhythm to write.

Once I start shooting I forget the scriptwriter in me. I like things flowing. If you have talented actors who bring their own ideas, it can be much better than what you have worked out.

It took me years to figure out that upset was upset, and tumultuousness was not the same thing as passion. Love isn't drama.

Only those who can see the invisible, can do the impossible.

Scream at God if that's the only thing that will get results.

Music comes to me more readily than words.

You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.

I have some weird habits. For instance, I love beets. Show me a salad bar and I will clean them out of their beets.

The more I've traveled to war zones, the more I'm convinced that the impact and the effects are way beyond anything we can even begin to imagine.

I think the most challenging part of being a performer is just making sure that people know that when you get up there every night, it's unique and that you care.

For quite some time, women at NASA only had scientific backgrounds.

The budget is like a mythical bean bag. Congress votes mythical beans into it, then reaches in and tries to pull real ones out.