I am a writer who was able to direct the films that I write.

I have always believed that there is a need for life-affirming films.

You know, you lose a lot of social skills if you’re a writer. You spend too long alone. And it’s forced me to address that.

Once you start to realize that a film is the sum of its editing, then editing is the thing you're always looking at.

The feeling of not belonging, of not being entirely worthy, of being sometimes hostage to your own sensibilities. Those things speak to me very personally.

My grandmother was a huge influence on me and the fact that there was this very strong, rather formidable presence of women in my life has been an enormous value.

The only lesson to extract from any civil war is that it's pointless and futile and ugly, and that there is nothing glamorous or heroic about it. There are heroes, but the causes are never heroic.

Look at it this way: if you write the novel of 'Cold Mountain,' it costs exactly the same to produce and market as a novel set in a room. If you make the film, the disparity of costs is huge.

No studio in Hollywood wanted 'Cold Mountain.' None. No one wanted 'Ripley,' no one wanted 'The English Patient.' That tells you there isn't really an appetite for ambitious movie-making out there.

I don't hold with the notion that only bad books make good movies.

[Abbas Kiarostami] is a great artist and a poet. I sometimes think that if Samuel Beckett made films, he'd make them like Kiarostami makes them.

To have a solid foundation of skepticism, -that is to say, the faculty of changing at any moment, of turning back, of facing successively the metamorphoses of life.

If you want to see what your truly committed to, look at your results.

The body of a sensualist is the coffin of a dead soul.

Obesity is now a problem in the navy. They've created a new rank: Really Big Rear Admiral.

A good novelist loves all of his characters, he lives in them, even in those who commit or must commit terrible acts.

My first assistant-coaching job in football was at William & Mary in 1961.

Now I am setting out into the unknown. It will take me a long while to work through the grief. There are no shortcuts; it has to be gone through.

Live each day as if it were the last day of your life because, so far, it is.

Although I am almost illiterate mathematically, I grasped very early in life that any one who can count to ten can count upward indefinitely if he is fool enough to do so.