I don't feel comfortable with violence, and I'm not sure that I film violent scenes properly, and it's something I'm reticent to do, and yet violence is sort of in all of my films.

The most heroic thing you can do is tell someone that you love them.

Used properly, cinema is the coolest thing in the world.

Cinema for me only has meaning when it has a relationship with what I see outside on the street.

What interests me about genre is that the public connects immediately with it, it has certain rules, certain codes the audience recognizes. I can use that to create something very big.

When someone is punched in the face, you find out what they are made of.

Cool? Am I cool? I don't know, but I hope my characters are cool, in the sense of iconic. That's my job, at its very essence.

I really believe the form of the film must be in the scenario; cinema is not just added value to the scripting. I believe in it as a totality.

Something that I tell myself every morning when I wake up is like: "Think it over, take the time to think it over." I don't like spontaneity, there you go. I'm wary of it.

Beauty is subjective: Bette Davis wasn't beautiful, but she was more than beautiful.

Film is abstract, not definite. It is a dream.

Mediation on the Scriptures will renew your mind.

As if Spade's chivalry would allow him to do anything to a woman. The harshest punishment she could imagine him dishing out to Cat would be refusing to open a door for her.

Does the real thing ever have the perfection of a stage performance?

The parts of the universe ... all are connected with each other in such a way that I think it to be impossible to understand any one without the whole.

I got to do a whole slew of TV movies playing the bad guy, including an episode of Smallville. That would never have happened if I hadn't done the Stand.

Leo Tolstoy ... defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers.

Socialist democracy is not, a luxury and its need is not limited to the most advanced industrial countries.

I like what I like, I don't like what I don't like, and I'm very bad at toning myself down.

My singing is part of me, like my stoutness, or my light hair, or my poor eyesight.

The secret of a successful relationship is avoiding the unforgivable and forgiving the unavoidable.