Reality shows are all the rage on TV at the moment, but thats not reality, its just another aesthetic form of fiction.

I think I'm good at amplifying an actor's strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses.

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.

To me the director’s job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.

If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed.

We [people] are a species that's wired to tell stories. We need stories. It's how we make sense of things. It's how we learn.

I want to thank anyone who spends part of their day creating...anybody who spends part of their day sharing their experience with us-I think this world would be unlivable without art and I thank you.

You’re supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you’re not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.

There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education, poverty, and drugs. Two of them we talk about, and one of them we don't.

What are the stories you want people to tell about you?

The ought to be a worldwide cultural taskforce that just stops you when you have ideas like combining The Red Desert with an armored car heist movie.

Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.

Don't quarrel with yourself

The [Bob] Dylan sessions were very disorganized, to say the least. I mean, the "Like A Rolling Stone" session I was invited by the producer to watch.

This solitude opressed her; she was accustomed to have her thoughts confirmed by others or, at all events, contradicted; it was too dreadful not to know whether she was thinking right or wrong.

I only know when I don't know a thing. My uncle has taught me that wisdom lies in that.

If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration.

An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old.

When you have 400 people watching you making a movie, it doesn't go where you want it to go. It's a lot of pressure.

There is nothing a natural man hates more than prayer.

In the seventeenth year of my age my mother died.