If you're trying to be realistic and bring real life to the screen, you are going to have different elements. That's what I'm trying to do. As I make the movie, different elements come in naturally.

When you are completely satisfied with what you have made, you're pretty much done as a director. So when that happens, that'll sort of be the end.

For me, trying to expand the energy to make one movie in Hollywood would be the equivalent in terms of energy to making 10 movies in Japan.

Filmmaking is not a balancing act, although some directors think it is. I don't believe in it. I like ups and downs. They're the best way to translate my feelings to the screen.

You can't really make something or make a movie and feel all through the process that it's a painful thing. It's not possible to do that.

I can't single out one thing that influenced me. My generation was influenced greatly by the manga that came out during our childhood.

I believe that every director's films reflect their lifestyle.

I don't know if I would call it therapy, but filmmaking is really the only thing I know how to do. For me, making movies is a way to bring on change for myself, and I really enjoy that part.

I go to the dentist, not a shrink.

As a filmmaker, you've got to have a nose for what's going on culturally. You have to feel it. It doesn't have to be manga or music, but you need some kind of antenna. That's very important.

And if I'm running away from something, I try to make myself face it and overcome that initial fear. As a director, I don't think it's possible to make a movie that you really don't want to make.

Apollo wanted out. Out of Aphrodite, out of this bathroom, out of this house, and out of this life.

One thought fixed upon the mind will be better than 50 thoughts flittering across the ear.

Put your trust in the Lord and go ahead. Worry gets you no place.

Language becomes a prison house only poets can escape...if we do not reject any strict distinctions between ordinary usage and figures of speech.

If I'm focused while I'm strokin I could change how you walk

With every pill we have prescribed for us we should also be given a creative prayer, a suggested way to correct our destructive patterns of thought.

You may try — but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl.

There is no racial or religious prejudice among people in the theater. The only prejudice is against bad actors, especially successful ones.

The dramatic modernization of the Asian economies ranks alongside the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution as one of the most important developments in economic history.

would you reach in the drawer there and give me my purse. A girl doesn't read this sort of thing without her lipstick.