I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That’s the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein.

There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.

Any good movie is filled with secrets.

There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw.

A movie is like a person. Either you trust it or you don't.

The unconscious is our best collaborator.

Being with an insanely jealous person is like being in the room with a dead mammoth.

I was just trying to make a nice little movie... It wasn't until I saw it all put together that I realized this was something remarkable.

I love the editing process of making movies. I just wish that life had one.

I have never understood people dividing things into dramas and comedies.

I came to love silence, because it's so rare, and it's now my favorite aural condition.

Don't just create a change for yourself, be a centre of change to others.

Living too much in one's head can be dangerous.

You tell me over and over and over again, my friend, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.

All hunt for fame, but most mistake the way.

I didn't even go to my prom. I didn't have one date in high school.

Attention is a silent and perpetual flattery.

I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of normal work.

Simply by changing your habitual vocabulary, you can instantaneously change how you think, how you feel, and how you live.

Only the man who can impose discipline on himself is fit to discipline others or can impose discipline on others.

We all need to have a creative outlet - a window, a space - so we don't lose track of ourselves.