There's definitely a way of thinking and a way of being in the South that has its advantages and disadvantages.

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.

The politics have always been difficult in medicine. There is some truth in the way medical practice is portrayed in TV dramas.

War is the most readily available form of chaos.

In my youth,geology was nervously striving to accommodate itself to Genesis. Now it is Genesis that is striving to accommodate itself to geology.

I'd love to talk to Janeane Garafalo or Randi Rhodes or Stephanie Miller from Air America. I'm an Air American junkie; I listen to them every day.

Because of the structure of the contemporary American party system, every president is polarizing.

That indolent but agreeable condition of doing nothing.

Zen is a special transmission outside the Canonical Scriptures; it does not depend upon texts.

Don’t move, and breathe only if you have to. (Caleb)

Don't be shaped by regret, disappointment, fear of the future, resentment and the like. The Lord's joy is your strength. Enjoy it.