I feel that my job is to create an atmosphere where creative people can do their best work.

Casting is 65 percent of directing.

There are two things I will never do in my life. I will never climb Mount Everest, and I will never work with Val Kilmer again. There isn't enough money in the world.

The accolades usually come when you're dead or too old to get a job

I have gotten to a point in my life where I don't want to have dinner with someone I don't like.

And in Hollywood, you know, everyone is an expert. Most of them are expert editors. They can't direct, they can't write, they can't act, but, by God, they all think they can edit.

I've found that the more experts you have on a movie, the less control the director has.

The importance of the assistant director cannot be overemphasized.

I look at actors very closely. It's not an accident when the actors excel.

First, speaking for myself, I don't want to ever be in a position where I'm telling other directors how to make movies, because I don't think it's any of my business.

The first assistant director is just so important that the choice of that person is critical to the movie.

Humans are the reproductive organs of technology.

Civilizations rise and fall on confidence. America had figured out a way to borrow money to manufacture it.

Four legs good, two legs bad.

I was accorded the opportunity to learn by failing - albeit at the cost of a few honourable teachers' sanity - and now I realise what a rare and incredible luxury that is.

I think we all have our own mission, duty, fate in life so for me somehow I think I am always walking on the edge of life and take risks.

I turned Compaq from a small company with troubles into a computer powerhouse. We can do the same at Intershop.

With every step of our lives we enter into the middle of some story which we are certain to misunderstand.

It is not enough that Jesus died. Someone must apply the blood of Jesus to the national sin of (the) USA.

You hit a bad shot, you have to get over it right there and then so you can get focused on the next one.

I hope the World War II generation doesn't lose that quality that made them so appealing: their modesty, and the way they are always looking forward and seldom back.