I want to tell beautiful stories. I know I want to tell stories that appeal to a large audience. I want to make movies that appeal to mass culture.

Disney was kind enough, thoughtful enough and believed enough in me, as a director, to wait for me to be available.

This is such a cliche, but I feel like filmmaking is a collaborative experience.

Cher is really down-to-earth, very nurturing, incredibly funny and fun, a great storyteller, and creates a great environment on the set.

Kristen Bell is rare as an actress, because she's the type of actor who jumps out of a plane without a parachute - from a totally fearless place, which is really refreshing and inspiring.

I actually had a movie green lit at Disney the same week 'Burlesque' was green lit - a movie for Disney called 'Mash-Up', about a high school marching band.

I want to make big movies that appeal to a lot of people. That's satisfying to me.

I always wanted to direct. I always saw myself as a director.

I love actors. I love working with actors. I really enjoy the process. I love having those in-depth discussions about the interior of their character, and actors really love to discuss that too.

In a huge way, everything that I've done in my life has helped inform my ability to communicate with actors and direct them.

I've been involved in burlesque for a really long time and I've always been really interested in burlesque, and I was writing musicals for different studios.

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

We are all pencils in the hand of God.

You ought to find all your might, to climb a higher height.

It is never long before identity is reduced to loyalty.

Hope is such a tenuous quality. To feel it and then to be denied what one most longs for ... Better, surely, not to hope at all, than to open the heart to a hope that is impossible.

Nora: "How do you feel?" Nick: "Terrible. I must've gone to bed sober.

I've got a Ferrari 430. It's black. I don't know what it cost but it wasn't cheap. I bought it because I was being a boy. It's fast and looks good.

From hence, let fierce contending nations know, what dire effects from civil discord flow.

You do well to have visions of a better life than of every day, but it is the life of every day from which the elements of a better life must come.

Too slow, the wagons of years, The oxen of days--too glum. Our god is the god of speed, Our heart--our battle-drum.