I always try to keep the confidence of the actors, and try my best to make them feel comfortable or confident.

You know, when you're isolated on set for like a month, people like to get rowdy.

The way brainwashing works is subtle and takes a long time.

The trappings of a religious cult tend to fall into candlelit ceremonies and robes and group chanting and singing and prayer.

What I learned from directing, I learned from soccer, where it's like a coach-player relationship.

When people leave cults, they don't know that they left a cult.

When I hire actors I believe in their abilities.

When I was a kid, I was afraid of large group of conforming people.

When you write, no matter what, it ends up personal.

You can't write something to please someone.

A big fear of working with an actor that's never been a lead in a film before is that you're going to have to work really hard to pull a performance out of her.

I've had a couple of long relationships. And I've had a couple of shorter relationships.

The truth is I'm getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.

Discovering the unexpected is more important than confirming the known.

Woman, you are a thousand kinds of fool.

My films don't have instant impact because they're dense with ideas that people have not thought about. It takes a while for the American public to wrap its head around some of the things I'm saying.

The fastest way to know God is to serve the God in someone else.

I feel strongly that women who look like me should feel great. So I am not changing.

I've got such effeminate hands. I could never be strong. Whenever I even got to a save, my fingers would just bend back and the ball would hit me in the face.

Sociology should... be thought of as a science of action-of the ultimate common value element in its relations to the other elements of action.