I like some time away to recharge the batteries, not only physically, but emotionally so that I get to the point where I'm just dying to direct again and then that's the right time to do it again.

Someone is going to win and someone is going to lose. That's also what happens in almost every movie - someone is going to win and someone is going to lose.

You set out to tell a good story. You don't do it because there is a deep message involved because the movie is almost always bad when you do that.

I think any time you've got a story based on a true story, no matter how accurate it is, obviously it's still fictitious.

A good deed is a good deed.

I've got twins and a lovely wife and a great life and I don't want to miss that. So if I'm going to miss that it's got to be for something really good.

Fiction is life by design.

But if it was always a point of speculation, where one person insisted it was a certain way and another denied it, how would anyone ever hold on to the truth?

I have a pretty good knowledge of the Indian world by virtue of living on several different reservations and being exposed to several different cultures and languages.

...for the system to be credible, people actually have to be deported at the end of the process.

I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?

Black people know what white people mean when they say “law and order”.

What makes you walk past thirty-thousand people without a second glance, and then you look at the thirty-thousandth-and-first person and know you'll never take your eyes off her again?

The sensory deprivation chamber has been the most important tool that I've ever used for developing my mind

In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page- boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk - they are all part of the curriculum.

Just think of yourself as starting from zero every time. That's what I do with every new role. I'm at zero, and I'm going to do the work.