I love fishing. You put that line in the water and you don't know what's on the other end. Your imagination is under there.

Filmmaking is a chance to live many lifetimes.

I never knew what I wanted, except that it was something I hadn't seen before.

[The Player is] not a truthful indictment of Hollywood. It's much uglier than I portrayed it, but nobody would've been interested if I'd shown just how sadistic, cruel and self-orientated it is.

Your own ego is the only trap that I think you can fall into.

Chance is another name that we give to our mistakes. And all of the best things in my films are mistakes.

I don't think screenplay writing is the same as writing - I mean, I think it's blueprinting.

If you have a child who is seven feet tall, you don't cut off his head or his legs. You buy him a bigger bed and hope he plays basketball.

All of my films deal with the same thing: striving, socially and culturally, to stay alive.

What is an ending? There's no such thing. Death is the only ending.

I have never made a movie that's attracted a 14-year-old boy.

The mind is a powerful force. It can enslave us or empower us. It can plunge us into the depths of misery or take us to the heights of ecstasy. Learn to use the power wisely.

For the land's sake, Sarah Gale, let the earth turn on its axis, and don't be forever tryin' to stop it. There ain't but one law of progress, so far as I know, and that's by changes.

My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.

Cinema seats make people lazy. They expect to be given all the information. But for me, question marks are the punctuation of life.

Diplomacy - the art of jumping into trouble without making a splash.

The easiest way to save money is to waste less energy.

Anything worth doing always starts as a bad idea.

The image is an image.

I have never willingly chased a ball.

Journalists are getting big stories wrong, over and over again.