I'm proudest of the fact that I've been able to make a few movies in the studio system that are slightly unorthodox and personal. But it's never quite as easy as you dream that it could be.

In the future, everybody is going to be a director. Somebody's got to live a real life so we have something to make a movie about.

Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around.

Be positive, be positive. It's rough out there, but don't succumb. Don't succumb to the cynicism in the world.

I have heard your words and your disappointment, and I offer you a heart-felt apology to all who felt this was an odd or misguided casting choice.

The future isn't just something that happens. It's a brutal force, with a great sense of humor, that'll steamroll you if you're not watching.

I write with music. I write scenes in movies that hopefully can earn the use of some songs that are powerful to me.

Take it from your own life, write what you believe in.

Optimism is a revolutionary act

People dance and we have a lot of music and... this might be the closet I get for a while.

The power of music is still with me, every day. It's one of the most inspiring things available in the world.

I was always observing. Even while talking, living, going through every motion, I was watching myself and the situation. That's a writer. Always observing.

He was abominable...and the most alluring, tortured soul I'd ever met.

LOVE the hideous in order to find the sublime core of it.

Think of exercise as medicine and take your daily prescription.

Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.

Acting is an imaginative leap, really. And imaginations prosper in different circumstances. And it's being able - I can't tell you how one does, but one tries to read those circumstances correctly.

All writing is dreaming

My world view has always been that there's just an enormous amount of cultural and religious diversity out there, all of which is really worth taking in.

If you want to capitulate to what commercial needs are, you can always be commercially valuable, but I'm not interested in being that.

I want to be the Bob DeNiro of the Jurassic.