Once you start to realize that a film is the sum of its editing, then editing is the thing you're always looking at.

I have always believed that there is a need for life-affirming films.

You know, you lose a lot of social skills if you’re a writer. You spend too long alone. And it’s forced me to address that.

The feeling of not belonging, of not being entirely worthy, of being sometimes hostage to your own sensibilities. Those things speak to me very personally.

My grandmother was a huge influence on me and the fact that there was this very strong, rather formidable presence of women in my life has been an enormous value.

The only lesson to extract from any civil war is that it's pointless and futile and ugly, and that there is nothing glamorous or heroic about it. There are heroes, but the causes are never heroic.

Look at it this way: if you write the novel of 'Cold Mountain,' it costs exactly the same to produce and market as a novel set in a room. If you make the film, the disparity of costs is huge.

No studio in Hollywood wanted 'Cold Mountain.' None. No one wanted 'Ripley,' no one wanted 'The English Patient.' That tells you there isn't really an appetite for ambitious movie-making out there.

I don't hold with the notion that only bad books make good movies.

[Abbas Kiarostami] is a great artist and a poet. I sometimes think that if Samuel Beckett made films, he'd make them like Kiarostami makes them.

Betrayals during war are childlike compared with our betrayals during peace.

When we are listened to it creates us makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.

Our strength lies in our intensive attacks and our barbarity...After all, who today remembers the genocide of the Armenians?

I think humor is the best gift, and if you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at?

I never really lived outside of the city growing up, but I'm always looking in between the lines of the city, and I magnetize over to the green spots.

Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others.

I can't give more than I have. It doesn't matter if I am the most beautiful person in the room. There is inevitably going to be somebody way shinier and more tan than my pasty self.

We live in our own world , A world that is too small For you to stoop and enter Even on hands and knees, The adult subterfuge.

Unity of minds, natural love and co-operation, are the qualities we have to develop today. Education is not for securing university degrees.

I tend to favour films that have multiple plot and story lines, multiple characters and ensemble pieces.

I still regret that I never played soccer in high school. I chose basketball over soccer.