I'm interested in directing movies about situations that I've lived, so they are almost a personal essay about what I've come to believe in.

Part of me longs to do a job where there's not a gray area.

It's an interesting combination: Having a great fear of being alone, and having a desperate need for solitude and the solitary experience. That's always been a tug of war for me.

I already did my coming out about a thousand years ago, back in the stone age.

Normal is not something to aspire to, it's something to get away from.

Being understood is not the most essential thing in life.

I've always had this idea that I wanted movies to make people better not worse.

Love and respect are the most important aspects of parenting, and of all relationships.

Let how you live your life stand for something, no matter how small and incidental it may seem.

Privacy above all else. Some day, in the future, people will look back and remember how beautiful it once was.

Knowing what paint a painter uses or having an understanding of where he was in the history of where he came from doesn't hurt your appreciation of the painting.

The Tour de France would make a great movie. Drugs, corruption, political chicanery, guys risking their lives - everything you need for a great sports drama.

Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

All round and round does the world lie as in a sharp-shooter's ambush, to pick off the beautiful illusions of youth, by the pitiless cracking rifles of the realities of age.

The theory of our modern technic shows that nothing is as practical as theory.

Why did we not know that heads of state were being eavesdropped on, spied on? We are the intelligence committee and we didn't know that.

I had to watch government fail for 25 years doing consumer reporting before I really saw it because intuitively, the reaction is problem, bring government and government will make it better.

Black does not appear in the rainbow of hope.

I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.

Give respect before you expect it. Treat people the way you want to be treated. Remember the mission. Set the example. Keep going.