The informing idea of what you want to say and do, that's what will take you from film school to professional - the idea. That's what is original to you.

Ive never seen a more terrifying film than 'The Bababook'. It will scare the hell out of you as it did me.

I'm not a fan of Star Wars. That is not for me. That is for my nephews and nieces. I don't get it.

Style is something that's extremely important, but it must grow naturally out of who and what you are and what the material calls for. It cannot be superimposed.

I believe it's true that there's good and evil in everyone and it's a constant struggle to have your better angels prevail.

Directing is a nice job. It's the best job for me. If I had to pay money to do it, I would do it... Directing is playing. Acting.

To me, the art of movies is to take a two-dimensional image and give the illusion of depth.

Violence is not funny.

And it was only a week later that I realized a close up of Steve McQueen was worth the greatest landscape you could find.

There are many untalented people making millions of dollars in the film business.

We all wind up the same way, no matter what our goals or ambitions are. We have nothing at all to say about how we got into this world or how are going to leave it.

If people buy your story, you'll never run dry.

When I talk about losing myself, which I did, it's losing my idea of who I was and my idea of what I was supposed to be doing and the idea of what my value was to God. I lost all of that at least.

My mother wanted to be president of the United States. She wanted to be the first woman president. She was born in 1924. Instead she had eight children.

The core values of our constitution are at the heart of our nation's progress.

The body should not just be something you see. It's also the inside of it. It's frightening and abstract and much more than pretty or not pretty. The shape of it is boring.

There are a lot of people who go their whole lives without truly knowing what love is, or ever experiencing that.

In those first few hours officially single again the world seems like it expands, suddenly bigger and more vast now that you have to get through it alone.

Great art has dreadful manners. The greatest paintings grab you in a headlock, rough up your composure, and then proceed in short order to re-arrange your reality.

It is music that, being the universal language, has no need to learn any particular language of the world.

It's the deleveraging that's going on right now that has caused the credit crisis.