It's become absolutely horrible the way the people with the money decide they can fart in the kitchen.

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.

Serve in the grace of strength within thy soul.

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

We are the people who won the Second World War and saved the world. We went to the moon. We gave the world the cell phone and Bruce Springsteen. There's no telling what we can accomplish.

Thank God genuine video phones hadn't been invented. I hadn't even grabbed a towel. Ford Prefect would despair of me.

When you've finished the film and everybody's already made back all their money, everybody just leaves you alone and I'm very happy. That's what it has to be like.

Every trait of beauty may be traced to some virtue, as to innocence, candor, generosity, modesty, and heroism.

Don't let your children take priority over your marriage and your work and everything else.

I stress character, character, character.

Everything in life is not all beautiful, not all fun. There is lots of killing and drugs.