I've always tried to make movies that pull the audience out of their seats... I want audiences to be transported.

One does not simply walk into Mordor.

The big-budget blockbuster is becoming one of the most dependable forms of filmmaking.

The most honest form of filmmaking is to make a film for yourself.

Remember, pain is temporary; film is forever.

If you work at love, you will find love at work.

Everybody's life has these moments, where one thing leads to another. Some are big and obvious and some are small and seemingly insignificant.

Filmmaking for me is always aiming for the imaginary movie and never achieving it.

Actors will never be replaced. The thought that somehow a computer version of a character is going to be something people prefer to look at is a ludicrous idea.

Every film is a challenge. I always say that making a movie is like film school - you're always learning. But unlike most schools, you never get done with it. You never learn everything.

I think that's the job of a director really, to sort of funnel all the creativity into one centralized point of being.

My sister having so much to do, was going to church vicariously, that is to say, Joe and I were going.

Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts.

If you think you can grasp me, think again: my story flows in more than one direction, a delta springing from the river bed with its five fingers spread.

I know God can cut it (popularity) off in a minute.

There was nothing, just this deathly, terrible silence in the dark night with the stars overhead.

I have a lot of Japanese friends: I grew up in Vancouver, and there's this huge Japanese population over there.

In the theater, you go from point A to point Z, building your performance as the evening progresses. You have to relinquish that control on a film.

What do you know of my heart? What do you know of anything but your own suffering?

A marveilous newtrality have these things mathematicall, and also a strange participation between things supernaturall and things naturall.

We have the most religious freedom of any country in the world, including the freedom not to believe.