I want to inspire, and be inspired.

Listen, you make a big movie, you're going into the Coliseum, and people are going to give you the thumbs up or the thumbs down. And that's part of the game. It's part of the fun as well.

When I drive through a field, I want to see green grass sometimes, and I don't want to see black and white.

Confidence is essential, but ego is not.

You've got to work. You've got to want an audience to sit forward in their chairs sometimes, rather than sit back and be bombarded with images.

Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.

Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.

I think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.

You think about taking audiences on a journey.

You've got to believe as a filmmaker that if a movie's good enough, it's going to survive; and if it's not, well, it won't.

This is the first time in 10 years I don't know what I'm doing next and I'm rather enjoying it. Soon I'll be climbing the walls no doubt, but right now, it's not clear, I'm just enjoying the freedom.

At the school of wisdom, mistake is not just a lesson but, a laboratory

With great power, comes a great need to nap.

Half of what we do depends on how smart we are, the other half depends upon how we do it

When you write, you put your thoughts in the public space. You get both positive and negative feedback.

We need to stop flying, stop driving cars and jetting around on marine recreational vehicles.

Greed, like the love of comfort, is a kind of fear.

I'm an environmentalist. Most of my jokes are recycled.

A great many political speeches are literary parricides; they kill their fathers.

The traits I respect are erudition and the courage to stand up when half-men are afraid for their reputation. Any idiot can be intelligent.

I do like any kind of project that has both comedy and drama in it because in life you don't have one day where everything is funny then the next day everything is dramatic.