We always feel safest, I think, around the most dangerous person who's on your side, more than the nice good person who's on your side.

We love the quality in a person, who can see themselves clearly and isn't ashamed of who they are.

What's great is when you're shooting at the same hotel you're living in, you finish shooting, put your stuff down, take an elevator and go to bed.

You're just always looking for something new. That's why a lot of people bounce between TV and movies. You have the ability to try something else.

You're often trying to fix a script by shooting it.

Most of the guys like sticking to the script and doing just what's written. If they're exploring, they're exploring ways of doing the script.

What you realize is that a lot of actors want to be directed. They're there to do the best job they can for the director. They have a lot of questions, and your job is to have answers.

You'll never meet a nicer person, let alone a nicer actress, than Mary Steenburgen.

It's so damn hard to write a great historical mystery based on fact. It's not for lack of trying.

Wisdom is a sacred gift from God.

Their dad was the god of thieves, but they were about a stealthy as water buffalos.

Trade isn't about goods. Trade is about information. Goods sit in the warehouse until information moves them.

Important achievements require a clear focus, all-out effort, and a bottomless trunk full of strategies. Plus allies in learning.

[In "The Invisible Woman"] was a different type of performance which was less driven by improv. You always want moments of freshness and newness, but there was less so than I've done before.

To know that everything we say and do to this new little human being may have a profound effect on him or her is a daunting obligation.

You can not be successful without confronting rejection.

We cannot possibly take them all into this country [asylum seekers] - it is a completely unrealistic expectation.

Nothing seems interesting when it belongs to you, only when it doesn't.

The biggest challenge is not the storytelling, it's to track every character's arc through the entire movie.