I love the idea of a movie hero in a thriller who is able to get ahead by just his brilliance, and not with a gun or by being an action hero.

Idealism loses to pragmatism when it comes to winning elections.

I was a volleyball player as a kid. I played volleyball all the time.

I have absolutely no musical talent of my own!

I don't think there is anything more bitter in American politics than a close election.

I was alone a lot as a kid, because my parents were divorced.

I've found that sitting around and obsessing about projects moving forward, when there's actually nothing I can do about it, at a certain point, is really counter-productive.

Certainly, for me, and it's gone this way on every project I've worked on, the "writing" never ends until you're done with the movie.

The auditioning process is one in which the actor gets very little information about almost every element of it.

My goal isn't so much genre, or fact-based or not fact-based. I just want to work on projects that I think could be great.

Everything I've written up to now, hasn't had anything to do with my life really.

I don't have dreams and inspiration. I just want to enjoy myself.

I delight sometimes in saying to - as when I'm a teacher, I love saying, 'This is really important, so don't write it down.' To me, what you retain is a very important filter.

At the core of every ordered system, whether a family or a factory, is chaos. But in the whirl of every chaos lies a strange order, waiting to be found.

In the end we just realize there's no end. It just goes on forever, in countlessly new forms. That's what's wonderful about the universe there's no escape from living. Death doesn't even end it.

I'm busy communicating ideas.... I want you to know what I'm thinking. If you feel a connection, good. If you don't, fine.

Something good made something bad possible (though not inevitable). Humans, however, didn't use their freedom well. Instead of using it to honor God in friendship, they used it to rebel.

The process of doing a play is an organic one and the process of doing a film is totally un-organic.

I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour.

There is good evidence that last year's European heat wave was influenced by global warming. It resulted in 26,000 premature deaths and cost $13.5bn.

There's nothing so aphrodisiacal for a woman as money and success.