There is sadness of when you're watching someone enjoy something that you think is substandard. The ineffable sadness when someone is happy and something is not as good as it should be.

I think I'm good at amplifying an actor's strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses.

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.

To me the director’s job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.

If you're sitting around thinking what other people think about your work, you'll just become paralysed.

We [people] are a species that's wired to tell stories. We need stories. It's how we make sense of things. It's how we learn.

I want to thank anyone who spends part of their day creating...anybody who spends part of their day sharing their experience with us-I think this world would be unlivable without art and I thank you.

You’re supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you’re not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.

There are three major social issues that this country is struggling with: education, poverty, and drugs. Two of them we talk about, and one of them we don't.

What are the stories you want people to tell about you?

The ought to be a worldwide cultural taskforce that just stops you when you have ideas like combining The Red Desert with an armored car heist movie.

Many times it takes just one member of a family to initiate the action to bring a family back together again.

And yet, protest it if we will, Some corner of the mind retainsThe medieval man, who stillKeeps watch upon those starry skeinsAnd drives us out of doors at nightTo gaze at anagrams of light.

I obviously am cognizant of the fact that being handsome gives me greater breadth of opportunity. I'd hope that what I bring to the table far surpasses just being handsome.

Words are the soul's ambassadors, who go / Abroad upon her errands to and fro.

Through Love and through Beauty, we achieve immortality.

D'Artagnan is the youngest of the four, and they're like his big brothers. They bring him up and teach him the ways of what it's like to be a Musketeer, and he embraces it with open arms.

This religion (Islam) recognizes all men as brothers. It accepts all human beings as equals before God, and as equal members in the Human Family of Mankind.

...you don't need to be technically great, because if you have a strong philosophy people will be moved by your pictures regardless.

We want five thousand dollars or you'll see your kid again.

In life you can either have a guru or misery, you cannot have both.