Most of the movies that I've made that I really felt good about and cared about made very little money anyway, so I'm not particularly worried about people downloading and sharing them.

When a butterfly flutters its wings in one part of the world, it can eventually cause a hurricane in another.

The more you do your homework, the more you're free to be intuitive. But you've got to put the work in.

The best films of any kind, narrative or documentary, provoke questions.

Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced.

Sometimes we don't see certain things until we're ready to see them in a certain way.

When people come together too young, they try to become one person. As you get older, you realize that you don't want to become one person because then you lose the person you are.

Instead of telling the world what you're eating for breakfast, you can use social networking to do something that's meaningful.

It's better for people to miss you than to have seen too much of you.

The more you can create that magic bubble, that suspension of disbelief, for a while, the better.

I like it when the deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away.

Ignorance is your opponent, fear is your enemy, vice is your adversary, virtue is your friend, and wisdom is your helper.

Never join with your friend when he abuses his horse or his wife unless the one is to be sold and the other to be buried.

Fantastic! Right in the middle of that long stretch between Christmas and Spring Break, your coats are getting dirty, everything's dark, dingy - what a great time for a movie!

You get somebody to crack a smile, that's a beautiful thing.

Quite often my narrator or protagonist may be a man, but I'm not sure he's the more interesting character, or if the more complex character isn't the woman.

The arousing of prejudice, pity, anger, and similar emotions has nothing to do with the essential facts, but is merely a personal appeal to the man who is judging the case.

I have never seen either a drop of piety or a grain of truth or ingenuousness - nay, I have never found common sense in any Jew.

Watches may disagree, but let us not.

Fortune always favors the brave, and never helps a man who does not help himself.

The painter unfolds that which has not been seen.