Jude [Law] is really good at playing an obsessive. He has a very watchable quality when he's on a quest for something.

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.

Blessed is he who keeps his hands from doing evil.

The products your life must have could be in the form of books you’ve read or teachings you listen to via audio or video.

The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.

Start Change Ourselves to Better and Then the Global

You're damned if you're too thin and you're damned if you're too heavy. According to the press, I've been both. It's impossible to satisfy everyone and I suggest we stop trying.

I wouldn't want to live without strong misgivings.

The story of civilization is, in a sense, the story of engineering-that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of nature work for man's good.

I have no consistency, except in politics; and that probably arises from my indifference to the subject altogether.

Everyone is more than what you see on the cover; we all run deep and have our story.

Unlike memory, which confirms and reinforces itself, history contributes to the disenchantment of the world.