My flag is always flying. My shingle is always out. I'm always looking for movie ideas. The hardest part of this whole movie-making endeavor is finding ideas. That's the real goal.

What is filmmaking but groping in the dark?

If you were falling in love and you could go back in time and relive a day and see the banal things you did that you'd forgotten about, you'd weep, looking at that day.

I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.

I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.

There is an audience out there for literate films - slower, more observant, more human films, and they deserve to be made.

You just never know when you're living in a golden age.

The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.

A pitfall of making a comedy with a studio-and it's also an American cultural thing-is that I get tired of being encouraged to go always for laughs.

I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.

If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that's probably not a very good movie.

Jesus does not allow us to be neutral about Him. Jesus demands that we decide about Him.

Everything I touch makes me a little bit more like the thing I’m touching, so I’d better start paying attention to what I’m touching.

Johnny Cash has only passed into the greater light. He will only become more important in this industry as time goes by.

If America can have a great relationship with Russia and with China and with all countries, I'm all for that. That would be a tremendous asset.

Loss is loss. Doesn't take death to create it.

It's a matter of will. If you know that you can keep your head, and that you must keep your head, you probably will keep your head.

When money disappears, we soon understand the power of absence.

Fame is an unnatural construct and those who go in search of it are the least likely to find it.

Marriage, my dear, is not suicide.

Retreat might give us a moment of respite but years of repentance at our weakness would, I believe, follow.