I was really into writing short fiction and also photography when I was a kid.

You know, when you're isolated on set for like a month, people like to get rowdy.

The way brainwashing works is subtle and takes a long time.

The trappings of a religious cult tend to fall into candlelit ceremonies and robes and group chanting and singing and prayer.

What I learned from directing, I learned from soccer, where it's like a coach-player relationship.

When people leave cults, they don't know that they left a cult.

When I hire actors I believe in their abilities.

When I was a kid, I was afraid of large group of conforming people.

When you write, no matter what, it ends up personal.

You can't write something to please someone.

A big fear of working with an actor that's never been a lead in a film before is that you're going to have to work really hard to pull a performance out of her.

Beware of those who are bored and not passionate about life, for they will bore you with reasons for not living.

When mindfulness is present, the Buddha and the Holy Spirit are already there,

What comes from sorrow, watered by tears, grows something of beauty. A salt garden. And so this I leave behind. A harvest for those who find their way into my life and I into theirs.

[Martin Luther] King subpoened the nation's conscience. He was killed for it.

I always put in one controversial item. It makes people talk.

You never hear in the news, "200 killed today when Atheist rebels took heavy shelling from the Agnostic stronghold in the north."

Separation of church and state cannot mean an absolute separation between moral principles and political power.

In this earth, in this immaculate field, we shall not plant any seeds except for compassion, except for love.

Of all the hazards, fear is the worst.

Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.