The only thing I really wanted was the freedom to be able to get what I want on film. I’ve dealt with the MPAA since 1973, so I know how to renegotiate and rework.

There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.

You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.

Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. Let the learning continue.

As a child I had terrible asthma.

More than ninety percent of directing a picture is the right casting

Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.

I love movies - it's my whole life, and that's it.

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

Always stay open to surprise.

I’m not interested in a realistic look, not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel.

Ensure you have done each day’s portion of the heavy responsibilities resting on you. Never delay your success!

We all find time to do what we really want to do.

Let me listen to me and not to them.

Nearly all of the advances in structural and aesthetic innovation is coming from abroad.

Steven Hawking is a brilliant physicist and when it comes to theology I can say he's a brilliant physicist.

High school is just horrible in general. So, I think it was a good time for me to have stopped acting. I got to be normal in high school.

First black president ever, and to be living while it happened - that's a good part of history. That's probably the biggest person I admire right now.

When a reserved person once begins to talk, nothing can stop him; and he does not want to have to listen, until he has quite finished his unfamiliar exertion.

I am told that today rather more than 60 per cent of the men who go to the universities go on a Government grant. This is a new class that has entered upon the scene ... They are scum.