I don't want all of American cinema to be big cartoons that are just made to be digested by the entire world.

What is filmmaking but groping in the dark?

If you were falling in love and you could go back in time and relive a day and see the banal things you did that you'd forgotten about, you'd weep, looking at that day.

I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.

I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.

There is an audience out there for literate films - slower, more observant, more human films, and they deserve to be made.

You just never know when you're living in a golden age.

The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.

A pitfall of making a comedy with a studio-and it's also an American cultural thing-is that I get tired of being encouraged to go always for laughs.

I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.

If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that's probably not a very good movie.

Every great scientific truth goes through three stages. First, people say it conflicts with the Bible. Next they say it has been discovered before. Lastly they say they always believed it.

I'm very romantic and of course I want to be in love.

Do ye hear the children weeping, O my brothers?

Your master is he who controls that on which you have set your heart or wish to avoid.

I stand on my public record as a defender of the human rights of Muslims, notably my work for Moazzam Begg and other British Muslims detained without trial in Guantanamo Bay.

In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.

Mostly I do films that mainstream Hollywood wouldn't touch.

It takes more than a wise man to keep track of a foolish woman.

I'm not cheap, you understand, I'm just a cut price person in a low budget land.

As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without cultivation, so the mind without culture can never produce good fruit