I would not presume to say that I know anything about "The Truth," whatever that is.

Film schools are not rigorous enough. They let things get by and kids get out there and they think they are saying something and doing something.

We're in an era where you learn about techniques, but you don't experience anything crucial in yourself about a piece of work from an artist that you love.

The point is not to give people a break. The point is to tell all the truth you can bear about them and not despise them, not to be a kumbaya kind of guy.

The maturity of man—that means, to have reacquired the seriousness that one had as a child at play

Christianity is a battle not a dream

Cinema and emotion trump reality for me.

You know, I have found in the course of a long public life that the things I did not say never hurt me.

If I write novels in a country in which most citizens are illiterate, who then is my community?

I just do what I think is funny and what's exciting to me.

I can now see to the bottom of my own depths, there is nothing stopping my gaze, no obstacle is in the way. And there is nothing there.

You always want your kids to step up at the moment of truth.

To force myself to earn more money, I determined to spend more.

Somewhere in [China's] soul lurks the cunning of an old dog, and it is a cunning that is strangely impressive. What a strange old soul! What a great old soul!