I'm not going to spend two years of my life on something that I'm not excited about.

I think I'm good at amplifying an actor's strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses.

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.

To me the director’s job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.

If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed.

We [people] are a species that's wired to tell stories. We need stories. It's how we make sense of things. It's how we learn.

I want to thank anyone who spends part of their day creating...anybody who spends part of their day sharing their experience with us-I think this world would be unlivable without art and I thank you.

You’re supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you’re not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.

There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education, poverty, and drugs. Two of them we talk about, and one of them we don't.

What are the stories you want people to tell about you?

The ought to be a worldwide cultural taskforce that just stops you when you have ideas like combining The Red Desert with an armored car heist movie.

God cannot alter the past, though historians can.

Why does Louis CK get named Comedy Person of the Year? I should be named Comedy Person of the Year just so I can parlay it into another few weeks of road work.

Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.

The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.

You may not yet be able to bring your unconscious mind activity into awareness as thoughts, but it will always be reflected in the body as an emotion, and of this you can become aware.

Most of us must learn a great deal every day in order to keep ahead of what we forget.

We have other legislation that all of you are aware that I have been so active on, with my colleagues here, and that is to shut down the gun shows.

Oh, it's you," Curran's voice said quietly. "I thought it was an elephant.

The need for Kitsch arises when genuine emotion has become rare.

I’m really alive! he thought. I never knew it before, or if I did I don’t remember!