Sometimes people can't afford to work for you, or they're not interested or available, and you hate to have written the whole movie with somebody in mind and not get them.

To this day, I get rewrite offers where they say: 'We feel this script needs work with character, dialogue, plot and tone,' and when you ask what's left, they say: 'Well, the typing is very good.'

Assumptions allow the best in life to pass you by.

I've always felt like I was on the margins. Once upon a time that's what independent used to mean.

I like to act. I work for scale. I don't have an acting agent. I'm in the book.

My argument has always been that this is not an anti-Bush film, it's a pro-democracy film. And if George W.Bush comes out on the wrong side of democracy, that's his problem.

I always feel that there are no final victories and no final defeats. But it's true that America is in a hole right now. There are a lot of dead fish in the water.

For me the writing, when I'm going to direct it myself, is really just the first draft, and I don't change it very much; I only change it on average about two lines per movie.

I figured somebody wrote a story who had a typewriter and I thought that movies were made by the cowboys and that they just said, 'Okay, you fall off the horse this time.

Well, acting is cheap; I knew all these actors who weren't in the Screen Actors Guild yet, and it happened that they were all just about thirty years old.

The hardest thing about movies is doing take 12, 13, and 14, and finding new ways to do the same lines. So the early takes are actually easier and I think there's more surprises in them.

Underlying many aspects of water development is a myth: the myth that we must have more.

Life is not about living the safer option. Life is about living a life worth living.

He didn’t fold his arms around her, and he didn’t hold her close. Instead, he gave her a kiss that suggested a future.

Don't Worry If She Ignored You Or You're Ugly. She'll See Your Beautiful Heart as Soon As You Step Out From The Audi.

I hope that my daughter grows up empowered and doesn't define herself by the way she looks but by qualities that make her a intelligent, strong and responsible woman.

Modeling was successful for me. I didn't have to wait tables or anything like that, so that was nice. And I got to see the entire world.

We teach ourselves; Zen merely points the way.

I think that is the ultimate cowardice, when someone makes your choices for you in an institutional way. And you just say, "Well, I have no other option."

How many people have had starter marriages? For some reason, mine really offends people.

She danced because she needed to. She needed to say things which could be said in no other way, and she needed to take her meaning and her living from the saying of them.