To see great actors bring it all to life us exhilerating

You can have levity in the film because real people look for levity in their lives.

I love the casting process. It's a cliché but I think it's the most important part of the process. I really enjoy it too. I love putting that jigsaw puzzle of people together.

The first time when you can really get a sense of what the movie is going to look and feel like is when you're in a casting room and seeing it.

I don't want to redo what I've [just done]. I don't want to retread old ground.

I'd like to make all different kinds of movies. I don't think it would make sense though for my second film to walk straight into a musical even though I'd like to.

If there were a little more silence, if we all kept quiet...maybe we could understand something.

Books were my pass to personal freedom. I learned to read at age three, and soon discovered there was a whole world to conquer that went beyond our farm in Mississippi.

Being an actor is the loneliest thing in the world. You are all alone with your concentration and imagination, and that's all you have.

My own funeral, I'd like to be laid out in a coffin in my own house. I would like my coffin to be put in the double parlor, and I would like all the flowers to be white.

Was it me that Botticelli imagined?

What boots it at one gate to make defence, And at another to let in the foe?

Directing music videos is all about capturing images.

You need the art in order to love the life.

We're all the sons of God, or children of the Is, or ideas of the Mind, or however else you want to say it.

There is more real devotional feeling summoned from the temple of the mind by great music than by any sermon ever delivered.