Learn to say, “I don’t know the answer.” It could be the beginning of a very good day’s rehearsal.

Listen, you make a big movie, you're going into the Coliseum, and people are going to give you the thumbs up or the thumbs down. And that's part of the game. It's part of the fun as well.

When I drive through a field, I want to see green grass sometimes, and I don't want to see black and white.

Confidence is essential, but ego is not.

You've got to work. You've got to want an audience to sit forward in their chairs sometimes, rather than sit back and be bombarded with images.

Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.

Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.

I think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.

You think about taking audiences on a journey.

You've got to believe as a filmmaker that if a movie's good enough, it's going to survive; and if it's not, well, it won't.

This is the first time in 10 years I don't know what I'm doing next and I'm rather enjoying it. Soon I'll be climbing the walls no doubt, but right now, it's not clear, I'm just enjoying the freedom.

What you leave behind is the people you loved. You leave yourself in them.

Characters are just extensions of my madness.

It was probably my mother's screaming that frightened the cat. It's just a guess. No one knows for sure why a cat fell from a ten-storey building onto my head.

There is a restlessness within us that cannot be satisfied until we rest fully in God.

Even when a bird walks, one feels it has wings.

Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die.

I try not to make social consciousness a massive part of my music or comedy because I prefer to be an entertainer first and foremost, then do actual grassroots work when I can.

You come home to find your 17-year-old daughter engrossed in a book. Which would delight you more - if it were 'Twilight' or 'Middlemarch?'

I've been making pizza dough lately. And I'm pretty sure the calzone was invented when a pizza got stuck on the peel.

If you bear the cross gladly, it will bear you.