Leo Tolstoy said the purpose of art is to teach you to love life. And that's what I want.

Audiences may be stupid, but they are never wrong.

I was always a filmmaker before I was anything else. If I was always anything, I was a storyteller, and it never really made much of a difference to me what medium I worked in.

The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure.

Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them.

A screenplay is not a finished product; a novel is. A screenplay is a blueprint for something - for a building that will most likely never be built.

Art doesn't just happen by accident. It is about pulling out new tricks and trying new things.

Art and commerce are not irreconciliable, they are inextricably intertwined.

I'm not really interested in the exploding car or endless sort of dystopian fantasies and superheroes. None of that... that doesn't interest me very much.

There are moments in one's life where you look back and you say, 'Well, I wish I had done this differently.

No rock and roll ensemble, however inspired, can deliver the kind of musical variety obtainable with the resources of 110 instruments.

I didn't ask to be born!""No, but I asked." He was breathing hard. His eyes hard and glinting with a fire that burned straight through me. "I asked for you every day of my life!

I'm not interested in making movies only with female protagonists. I think it's ridiculous to think that a female director can't direct men. That makes no sense to me.

The two parts of technology that lower the threshold for activism and technology is the Internet and the mobile phone. Anyone who has a cause can now mobilize very quickly.

With every case from years ago there should be lessons learned.

One of the key qualities of all stories is that they are made to be shared.

I would say I am very much more interested in ethics than in code/ morality. I think it's in this way that one avoids the conservatism inherent in "the moral".

You know, when I'm playing, I think of myself in front of the Wailing Wall with a saxophone in my hands, and I'm davening, I'm really telling it to the Wall.

This is about doing something difficult and not stopping when it becomes not just difficult, but cold and difficult...or cold and wet and difficult...or cold and wet and dark and difficult.

It's what you deserve to hear," I say firmly, my eyes going cloudy with tears. "That you're whole, that you're worth loving, that you're the best person I've ever known.

The holy time is quiet as a nun Breathless with adoration.