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.

When things go right it's hard to figure out why, but when things go wrong it's really easy.

If you are not able to see your goals, they will take longer to achieve, and sometimes “longer” is "never.

No sky Leila had seen before could compare to the beauty she was seeing above her. It didn't feel like some accident of nature but rather something that was purposefully unleashed on the world.

The light of love is a flaming fire.

Imagine reality, reality will imagine you.

God did not create evil. Just as darkness is the absence of light, evil is the absence of God.

The Army was my bread and butter.

There is no kind of ultimate goal to do something twice as good as anyone else can. It's just to do the job as best you can. If it turns out good, fine. If it doesn't, that's the way it goes.

I like good food and decent wine as much as Roy Jenkins does, but I keep quiet about it.

The mountains are in labour, the birth will be an absurd little mouse.

Everybody knows how lazy he is. One day the neighbors saw Fang mow the lawn and I got three Get Well cards.