I have a profound passion for the act of flying. It's very freeing, with an intense physicality, but it also gives an Olympian, god's-eye view, which fuels a larger cerebral and structural analysis.

I realized that if I wanted to truly talk about vastness and the sublime and scale and the West - recurrent themes in my overall work - I needed to engage with the vast ocean that is Los Angeles.

Los Angeles functions for me as a kind of holy template. It is postwar America.

... anybody who has spent time with cameras and photographs knows that images, like gravestone rubbings, are no more than impressions of the truth.

I struggle against photography. I struggle against the fact that it is silent, that it is just a piece of paper on the wall, often presented in a tedious white matt frame.

I come at a subject from a profoundly photographic level. I am not interested in pictures that ultimately don't work as pictures.

What better way to actually deal with L.A. than to get above it and engage with the horizontality and scale of the basin itself?

Flying was certainly formative for me; I have a deep and lasting ease with it as a result.

I don't think anyone ever gets over anything in life they merely get used to it.

Home should never be dark or full of shadows and secrets. It should be bright and full of open doors. It should be full of stories wanting to be told.

Custom looks to things that are past, and fashion to things that are present, but both of them are somewhat purblind as to things that are to come.

I am not well educated or bright enough to be politically clued in, but I hope in the film that I'm going to shock a few people, win a lot of people over.

From the time I was 8 until now, I've been working. My Social Security is looking solid.

I'd much rather have a book that a few people love intensely than a book that a lot of people like okay.

I opened my eyes and met his dark, earnest gaze. "It's okay," I said. "It's okay now. I'm here I'll always be here for you.

I try to use my voice. I know that celebrity is valuable, and people do listen.

Vladimir Putin is a dictator. He's not a leader. Anybody who thinks otherwise doesn't know Russian history and they don't know Vladimir Putin.

When life gets blurry, adjust your focus.