I work fitfully, in hope rather than in expectation, invent methods which last a week, and fill notebooks with tiny, illegible writing which often defies my own attempts to decipher it.

I have always believed that there is a need for life-affirming films.

You know, you lose a lot of social skills if you’re a writer. You spend too long alone. And it’s forced me to address that.

Once you start to realize that a film is the sum of its editing, then editing is the thing you're always looking at.

The feeling of not belonging, of not being entirely worthy, of being sometimes hostage to your own sensibilities. Those things speak to me very personally.

My grandmother was a huge influence on me and the fact that there was this very strong, rather formidable presence of women in my life has been an enormous value.

The only lesson to extract from any civil war is that it's pointless and futile and ugly, and that there is nothing glamorous or heroic about it. There are heroes, but the causes are never heroic.

Look at it this way: if you write the novel of 'Cold Mountain,' it costs exactly the same to produce and market as a novel set in a room. If you make the film, the disparity of costs is huge.

No studio in Hollywood wanted 'Cold Mountain.' None. No one wanted 'Ripley,' no one wanted 'The English Patient.' That tells you there isn't really an appetite for ambitious movie-making out there.

I don't hold with the notion that only bad books make good movies.

[Abbas Kiarostami] is a great artist and a poet. I sometimes think that if Samuel Beckett made films, he'd make them like Kiarostami makes them.

No matter how far apart we may be, no matter what dreams we may chase after individually, I want you to know that you will always be my first priority. I will always, always love you.

Not so long afterwards it was broad day light in Iluji for the first time ever.

I'm going to take the kids away over Christmas but I don't, I've written 14 musicals now, I don't want to rush into doing something just for the sake of doing it. I want to do it when I find a story.

The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history.

You can have fun, respect the game and also play it hard. When you have that combination, you're going to put yourself in a position to be successful.

Usually one or two things happen: Either you have an idea straightaway - the sort of sound that you want or the instrumentation or one particular sound that you want to feature - or you don't.

You can't make people respond.

I've always favored kids as a player. If I walked out of the locker room and there were 100 people there and 50 of them were kids, I'd sign the 50 kids before anything else.

My friends, God is necessary for me if only because he is the one being who can be loved eternally.

I like to write about certain things that if they are not written about are not going to exist.