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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Repentance is a 180 degree turn, whereas Reformation is only a 90 degree turn.

I think that America has to stand with democracy.

The rights of the people who have done terrible things are hard to defend. You have to keep pointing out, the question is the process to determine whether they've done the terrible things.

God wants to father all of us until we're dead sure of his approval, his guiding power and his promise of heaven.

Use it, Rosie, that's what it's there for.

My story, or my life or my legacy can hopefully show [fans] that once you’re down, that doesn’t mean you’re down forever. You never let up.

To speak...means above all to assume a culture, to support the weight of a civilization.

Anything, everything, can be learned if you can just get yourself in a little patch of real ground, real nature, real wood, real anything ? and just sit still and watch.

It would be nice to find a 'planet of trees and birds' in the space; only trees and birds, millions of different trees and millions of different birds!

The people who illegally cross into the country are from countries that have very close ties to al Qaeda, whether it's Yemen or Afghanistan, Pakistan, China. It is an absolute national disgrace.