I'm not a Hollywood director. I'm an in spite of Hollywood director.

There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.

You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.

Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. Let the learning continue.

As a child I had terrible asthma.

More than ninety percent of directing a picture is the right casting

Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.

I love movies - it's my whole life, and that's it.

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

Always stay open to surprise.

I’m not interested in a realistic look, not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel.

When I was a very little boy, I lived underneath the air pattern of LaGuardia airport in New York and I watched the planes fly to their destinations. I was in love with the design of these airplanes.

I wrote a novel about Israelis who live their own lives on the slope of a volcano. Near a volcano one still falls in love, one still gets jealous, one still wants a promotion, one still gossips.

Russia has to have a technology company of global meaning sooner or later. We should take the depth of technical culture we have here and make it available worldwide.

Mel Gibson is my friend. I love Mel. He's not the person that I hear people are often trying to diminish. Whatever his challenges are in life, he still remains someone I'm very close to.

You have but to know an object by its proper name for it to lose its dangerous magic.

Counting pairs is the oldest trick in combinatorics... Every time we count pairs, we learn something from it.

What is sickness? What is health? Both are distractions. Put them both aside and go forward.

Turkey will "inevitably" join the EU in our lifetime unless we vote to leave.

Hollywood is tripping over its own feet.

At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.