I just don't think of myself as an actor much at all, so I don't lust after any particular roles.

One of the great things about being a director as a life choice is that it can never be mastered. Every story is its own kind of expedition, with its own set of challenges.

Confidence is preparation in action.

If I had to choose between a great acting job and a good directing job, I'd choose the directing job.

Humor is unavoidable. It might not feel funny in the moment, but more often than not there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

Death can be experienced once, winning maybe more, but losing can happen all the time.

I've just looked for ideas and great characters that I relate to and that I think I can offer something to the audience, and I no longer look at them as experiments or genre exercises at all.

I think the most important thing really was that you could take very personal ideas and present them to an audience in entertaining ways.

There's a very real argument that the minute we are capable of going to a planet, whether it's Mars or another one, and inhabiting it, that we really should.

I'm not a caterer. I just have to stay with my creative convictions. At some point, you have to just get past the special-interest groups and do what you're there to do, which is make a movie.

You're always a little surprised when something really takes off.

Travel steadily in your define path.

Don't play to beat someone, play to win.

The only time an Australian ever walks is when his car runs out of petrol.

The Federal Reserve will not monetize the debt.

When an institution goes through an inflection point, it has to institutionalise itself. That institutionalisation requires governance to be put in place, governance processes.

Sufism and yoga are one and the same thing. They are just words, in wisdom there is no difference. All the teachings are absolutely the same. They are only different paths to the One.

I want to use whatever connections to get a super-outstanding Basquiat in the White House. It could be one of mine. It could be something that a friend owns.

Two words, Super Cuts.

Saints spring and thrive most internally, when they are most externally afflicted. Afflictions are the mother of virtue.

On my first day teaching my own classroom, I threw up before I entered the building.