The accolades usually come when you're dead or too old to get a job

Casting is 65 percent of directing.

There are two things I will never do in my life. I will never climb Mount Everest, and I will never work with Val Kilmer again. There isn't enough money in the world.

I have gotten to a point in my life where I don't want to have dinner with someone I don't like.

And in Hollywood, you know, everyone is an expert. Most of them are expert editors. They can't direct, they can't write, they can't act, but, by God, they all think they can edit.

I've found that the more experts you have on a movie, the less control the director has.

The importance of the assistant director cannot be overemphasized.

I look at actors very closely. It's not an accident when the actors excel.

First, speaking for myself, I don't want to ever be in a position where I'm telling other directors how to make movies, because I don't think it's any of my business.

The first assistant director is just so important that the choice of that person is critical to the movie.

I feel that my job is to create an atmosphere where creative people can do their best work.

He stood at the entrance to the kitchen, blocking my path to the front door like the Berlin Wall. -- Least Wanted

As in nature, all is ebb and tide, all is wave motion, so it seems that in all branches of industry, alternating currents - electric wave motion - will have the sway.

I never felt scandal and confession were necessary to be an actress. I've never revealed my self or even my body in films. Mystery is very important.

In America, they want you to accomplish these great feats, to pull off these David Copperfield-type stunts. You want me to be great, but you don't ever want me to say I'm great?

[Dean Martin] my favourite out of everyone because there is a grace that he brings. What he did seemed so effortless.

We think about sitting in a space and hearing some music by having our ears pointed forward towards the musicians sitting opposite us. I'm really not following that paradigm at all.

Dramas need to have a certain aesthetic that comedy just doesn't really seem to need to have.

I don't think I'm kind of universally known. I think in the indie world I'm probably better known than in some mainstream Hollywood terms.

We fail when we try to give simple answers to complicated problems.

The hardening of the attitudes is the most deadly disease on the face of the earth.