People always ask why I don't make independent movies. I do make independent movies - I just make them at Sony and Paramount.

You have a responsibility for the way you make the audience feel, and I want them to feel uncomfortable.

People will say, 'There are a million ways to shoot a scene,' but I don't think so. I think there are two, maybe. And the other one is wrong.

Everything seems really simple on paper until you take a camera out of the box.

People go to the movies to see things they haven’t seen before. Call me a radical.

I don't know how much movies should entertain. To me I'm always interested in movies that scar. The thing I love about JAWS is that I've never gone swimming in the ocean again.

I don't think that digital technology will ever take away the humanity of storytelling, because storytelling is entirely, in and of itself, a wholly human concern.

I think intelligence is totally subjective; it's like sexiness.

In film, we sculpt time, we sculpt behavior and we sculpt light.

I like characters who don't change, who don't learn from their mistakes.

My idea of professionalism is probably a lot of people's idea of obsessive.

The human carries the formation of the whole universe in him. The time, he begins to realize his own identity, slowly the nature of the universe is revealed to him.

Following the rules only takes you so far, sooner or later you have to forget them and play by your heart.

If someone starts agreeing with me, I don't like it. Out of pique, I become something else.

The concentration in my book on Marie Antoinette's childhood and on her family influences. It is surprising how some books actually start with her arrival in France!

It's incredibly important to me that my children don't put anything in their bodies that they haven't tested first - that's how you end up dying.

As yesterday's positive report card shows, childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured. —New York, Sept. 26, 2007

If I am going to get in a cab to go home, and I see a sign for an open house, I will go in. I like real estate because I am the boss.

It is easy to be a moral perfectionist when one is politically unaccountable.

I bought a dress a few years ago for £2,500. It was outrageous and not the kind of money you want to be spending. I had a mad moment that day.

Literacy is so you can read the operating instructions.