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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

We believe that beautiful people must have equally beautiful personalities. But what is amazing is how complete is this delusion!

we are houses eaten by rivers because we do not know their smell.

Evelyn: There's nothing wrong with embracing one's emotions.Brittany: Mom, You don't just embrace your emotions, you make love to them hard-core.

Just because you can, doesn't necessarily mean that you should!

Learn from yesterday, live for today.

And where does she find them?

Trees, though they are cut and loped, grow up again quickly, but if men are destroyed, it is not easy to get them again

The fool who repeats again and again: "I am bound, I am bound," remains in bondage. He who repeats day and night: "I am a sinner, I am a sinner," becomes a sinner indeed.

I like the idea that a song can be something that you can lean on, both for the songwriter and for the person who hears the song.

I think that what drives most of us as human beings is the want for something. You might have a hope, or a big dream, or a goal that you haven't yet achieved.