There's nothing creative about living within your means.

I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.

When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?

I used to love going into local hardware stores, to look at little things they made locally. Nowadays it's harder, though you can still do it in Vietnam.

I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies.

Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.

We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.

You don't have to specialize - do everything that you love and then, at some time, the future will come together for you in some form.

If the movie works, nobody notices the mistakes... If the movie doesn't work, the only thing people notice are mistakes.

I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.

Only when one is connected to one's inner core is one connected to others. And, for me, the core, the inner spring, can best be re-found through solitude.

The artist does not have to suffer to show suffering.

It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.

Period movies are just always a wonderful thing to work on.

I think you need a really strong businessperson running the state, a person who's used to turning negatives into positives, which is what happens in business.

It was God who created hell as a place to store evil. He didn't do a good job of keeping it there though.

It is basically a strategy to destroy the essence of democracy, which is the competitiveness and choices of candidates on the ballot.

Daydreaming subverts the world.

You cannot mandate productivity, you must provide the tools to let people become their best.

Now, we learn that a system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system.