It happens sometimes that when someone has a camera, they change; sometimes they change for the better.

You can never maintain just pure happiness. In my life, I want full emotion. I want equal parts happiness and sadness.

There's something so glorious in giving control to the world. I think that's what I'm trying to do in my films-control the world but also let it be chaotic, let there be life.

I always say writing is like dreaming, shooting is like living, and editing is like murder, because you take all these gifts that actors give you, and you cut them.

When I made my student film, a feature, nobody wanted to talk to me and I was, like, in the desert for 12 years.

I tell the actors that the biggest gift they can give me is to fail. And that the second gift they can give me is to surprise me.

A lawyer actually has to see all sides of a situation. Lawyers actually might be the most understanding human beings.

There's one rule that I have on my movies, which is that anything that you want to do, you can do. But! There's a flip side to that, which is that anything I want you to do, give it a try also.

God is my heavenly Father.

If you want to make peace with your enemy, you have to work with your enemy. Then he becomes your partner. -Nelson Mandela, activist, South African president, Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1918)

I am the prince of procrastination. It is my besetting sin. I never put off till tomorrow what I can possibly do - the day after

Work is either fun or drudgery. It depends on your attitude. I like fun.

People who are considered scary or odd or even monsters are so often the people that just need love and someone to care for them.

I now have two different audiences. There's the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years, and the American family audience. American jokes, less fighting.

You need to look to make a cohesive calendar that makes sense and helps elongate the careers of your players as opposed to shorten them inadvertently.

I don't follow any system. All the laws you can lay down are only so many props to be cast aside when the hour of creation arrives.

Sometimes it is better not to know. Sometimes when you do know you just fold up.

It's hard to understand the films that you're in, because you never truly get to see them.