I actually feel that all drama has an element of comedy in it. A great deal of that I learned from writers like Chekhov who called his plays his comedy even when they touch on tragedy.

To be a creative person and be a professional, as an artist you have to be able to withstand pain, rejection, and for some, a lot of bad feelings, but you have to be able to look through those.

All history is defined by shifting modes of reality and time and how things change. That’s what I love about cinema. It changes in the moment.

By 1988, I was living in New York myself.

To me, honesty and the difficulty of honest communication are at the heart of both my life and my movies. The difficulty of being yourself.

You are always factoring in the economy within the process of creating something, and making decisions that seem both fearless and full of fear.

I'm a version of the same person.

The questions of economics, and how they infect, or rather how they affect intimacy. And that's probably the subject of all my films.

For me, an actor is really, first and foremost, a person and an individual, more than they are an actor or a professional.

I'm interested in what actors reveal about themselves through the structure of the character.

I'm someone who can create critiques of individuals based on their economic history. That's one way I look at people in terms of one story that could be told purely in a Marxist construction.

The 7 Steps to Transformation:1. Dream it.2. Envision it.3. Think it.4. Grow it.5. Become it.6. Live it.7. OWN it.

It is a rule of leading people, Gideon. You may be confused, or afraid, or overwhelmed, or all three—those who depend on you must never see it.

Distractions can be disastrous if they are allowed, they will steal precious time and energy from most important things that matters in life.

I want to feel like I'm making a difference in this world. And I want some time for living rather than just working. Life is for living, isn't it? It can't be all just for working

I was too much in solitude, and consequently was obliged to be in continual burning of thought, as an only resource.

We know already ample experience that it does not require much cleverness or much learning to be a governor, for there are a hundred round about us that scarcely know how to read.

...it is more civilized to make fun of life than to bewail it.

The biggest waste of brainpower is to want to change something that's not changeable.

We make the kind of movies we like to watch. I love to laugh. I love to be amazed by how beautiful it is. But I also love to be moved to tears. There's lots of heart in our films.

I love designing dresses and tops.