If you just read the book, you're taking in the narrative, you're taking in the characters, you're understanding it in a certain way. If you make a movie it's really an act of translation.

I used to care about how I looked. Now I don’t care as much. Maybe it’s because I’m so handsome.

Sometimes I get a little sad, and I feel like being alone. Then I talk to my cat about it, and he reminds me I’m James Franco. Then we dance.

All I know is that when I needed McDonald’s, McDonald’s was there for me.

Create your world around your work. Create your work around your life. Let other people help you shape it.

You are successful if you are able to work on the kind of material that you want to - if your life conforms to your dreams, regardless of outside acceptance or acclaim.

The selfie is the new way to look someone right in the eye and say, 'Hello, this is me.'

If this is the only life, then why I’m not just doing everything I want to do.

I am very grateful for my life. I think one of the keys to not being depressed is to find gratitude and to be grateful for what you have. So I am grateful for what I have.

You want to be interesting? Be interested.

It's hard when you're doing a film based on a true story to really figure out what all those relationships were.

Unbidden, Unwelcome, Yet unable to resist, I entered a stranger's life

You can sleep in a forest and have a nice dream. But when you wake up, you will have a much better dream: The Magnificent Reality!

Honour was like a coat: sometimes one did not have time to put it on.

What is a hero without love for mankind.

Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

If you would stop, really stop, damning yourself, others, and unkind conditions, you would find it almost impossible to upset yourself emotionally - about anything. Yes, anything.

Every cinematographer I worked with had his own way of solving problems.

If you engage people on a vital, important level, they will respond.

I've been so good in so many movies that nobody saw.

America's support for human rights and democracy is our noblest export to the world.