If you're going to make a movie for ten thousand you can talk everybody into doing it for free. You could make a really good-looking movie right for ten grand, if you have an idea.

I think I'm good at amplifying an actor's strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses.

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.

To me the director’s job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.

If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed.

We [people] are a species that's wired to tell stories. We need stories. It's how we make sense of things. It's how we learn.

I want to thank anyone who spends part of their day creating...anybody who spends part of their day sharing their experience with us-I think this world would be unlivable without art and I thank you.

You’re supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you’re not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.

There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education, poverty, and drugs. Two of them we talk about, and one of them we don't.

What are the stories you want people to tell about you?

The ought to be a worldwide cultural taskforce that just stops you when you have ideas like combining The Red Desert with an armored car heist movie.

The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

Who am I to judge me?

Until I was left with nothing but life and books, I realised these two gracious gifts, where enough for me to exist.

You don't spread democracy through the barrel of a gun.

The presentation of the Golden Badge of the Movement is the highest honor the Third Reich has to offer.

English country life is more like Chekhov than The Archers or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.

Clearly while the president is overseas, he's at a conference and while the president is overseas I think it's appropriate that people not be critical of him or our country.

Set your target and keep trying until you reach it.

Anytime I am around a male body part it is kind of exiting.

I think what Osama bin Laden does is to take the fact that some peoples lack hope and lack opportunity, and twist it to his own ends.