It's funny when you put music up against picture, and all your preconceptions go away, and you start over. You just realize that that doesn't work at all.

Your favorite story, whatever it might be, was written for one reader

I like to write about love plus an obstacle. Not a really big obstacle; not too serious and not too funny. Just somewhere nicely in between - a combination of the two.

You want to surround yourself with people who are as dedicated to their discipline as you are to yours and let them do what they do.

Believe me, you can be in the middle of a beautiful take and the next thing you know you're awash in people crossing the street. You can't even find your actors.

There are people who are put on this earth to do everything.

I knew I wanted to work in Cinemascope because I find it much more beautiful just in terms of the shape of the screen, the wider image, and it's also less like television, which is important.

I think everybody has a little rule follower and a little rule breaker in them.

It's always hard, but it's always fun to attack a premise that you think is interesting. It does take a few drafts for sure.

Sometimes you go against what they say because you believe in it anyway.

I used to only write poetry

The true socialist utopia turns out to be a field of F-1 hybrid plants.

A life is no less valuable or beloved if one lives in an age of decline, than in an age of progress.

Since when has outright denial of truth become a Nigerian factor?

Only the brave know how to forgive. ... A coward never forgave it is not in his nature.

If I have had any success, it's due to luck, but I notice the harder I work, the luckier I get.

If Heaven and Earth are unable to persist, how could man?

When I was very young every grownup was a hero. It's been all downhill since then, and I have only two left.

I must reorganize the environment of man by which then greater numbers of men can prosper.

I’ve come to ask how you do it. How you feel what I know you’re feeling and then walk away like that.