I like to make all kinds of movies. I'd do 'Ocean's Thirteen' with the right script.

I think I'm good at amplifying an actor's strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses.

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.

To me the director’s job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.

If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed.

We [people] are a species that's wired to tell stories. We need stories. It's how we make sense of things. It's how we learn.

I want to thank anyone who spends part of their day creating...anybody who spends part of their day sharing their experience with us-I think this world would be unlivable without art and I thank you.

You’re supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you’re not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.

There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education, poverty, and drugs. Two of them we talk about, and one of them we don't.

What are the stories you want people to tell about you?

The ought to be a worldwide cultural taskforce that just stops you when you have ideas like combining The Red Desert with an armored car heist movie.

A ‘good’ father will tenderly cultivate his children. But a ‘good’ father who is also a ‘brave’ father will let the children without cultivate the child within.

The river flows to the sea, whatever the wind says about it

Clean water is a great example of something that depends on energy. And if you solve the water problem, you solve the food problem.

I know what I can know, and am not troubled about what I cannot know.

Success is about us. Significance is about others.

It's not unusual for kids in their twenties to be mad at their parents.

As ability goes, so goes our fortune.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

A crackpot theory. Instead of saying labor's exploited, as Marx did, Kelso says capital's exploited. It's worse than Marx. It's Marx stood on its head.

The older you get, the more you know about certain things.