I grew up in San Francisco and moved to L.A. about 20 years ago, and now my main home is in Hollywood.

The more you travel, the better you get at it.

In my films that I've directed, and my work in commercials and videos, I've rarely used handheld. It's just not something I'm drawn to, but I've seen it done very well.

When I'm in London, Claridge's is a great favourite. I'm a big fan of art deco architecture and the rooms are extraordinary.

Recently, I was in Bernalda, my dad's ancestral home town in Italy. He has just refurbished a palazzo and turned it into a hotel, so we had my sister's wedding there. It was beautiful.

As a director myself, you really appreciate collaborating with people who are trying to help you find what you need and what you want.

I really value distinctive movies, movies that feel that they came from a person that was really something that they had conceived and they made and is a reflection of who they are.

I love 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' and I love 'Bugsy Malone.' I haven't seen 'Bedknobs and Broomsticks' in a long time, but I remember loving it as a kid.

A movie that I'm involved with and have a lot of love for, which is On The Road, does use a lot of handheld. It can be done beautifully. I'm proud of that. It's a very beautiful movie.

Sometimes in writing you have difficult periods and then other times it just flows.

Relationship movies are often made for a female audience.

Dreams don't work unless you take action. The surest way to make your dreams come true is to live them.

People sometimes talk about the power of first impressions, and believe me, there is truth to it.

I have a teacher friend who gets nervous when there's $200 in her account. But at least she knows that in a week, she'll get another paycheck. I have no idea.

Note, besides, that it is no more immoral to directly rob citizens than to slip indirect taxes into the price of goods that they cannot do without.

My imagination doesn't require anything more of the book than to provide a framework within which it can wander.

Idleness is the enemy of the soul; and therefore the brethren ought to be employed in manual labor at certain times, at others, in devout reading.

To strip a man of all loyalties but those to the state, makes him not only a worm but a monster, without a shred of humanity.

The world we are in today is likely to end catastrophically, as many other human worlds have done before.

The purpose of Plan Columbia was to deal with the increased cultivation and illegal activity associated with that cultivation concerning narco trafficking in Columbia.