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.

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.

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

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.

God takes two and make them one but satan takes one and make it two.

The criminal ineptitude makes you furious.

The great movie can be as free of being a record of the progress of the protagonist as is a dream.

I was not too smart and constantly mouthed off and didn't know anything.

If a steaming hot potato fell in your hands you would get it off you as soon as you could. Do the same with negative destructive thoughts- just release them as fast as you can.

Human beings are strange creatures. As people come across one another they produce various outcomes. Good things, sometimes. And other times, bad.

Take Time Out. It's not a real vacation if you're reading email or calling in for messages.

Hate always sells well, but for repeat trade and the long pull happiness is sounder merchandise.

I'm not that in control of myself that I could be specific about exactly the way I'm doing everything as it happens. I'm just trying my best

The absence of disease is not health.