What I want any genre to do, what I want any work of art to do, is to illuminate the human condition.

Audiences may be stupid, but they are never wrong.

I was always a filmmaker before I was anything else. If I was always anything, I was a storyteller, and it never really made much of a difference to me what medium I worked in.

The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure.

Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them.

A screenplay is not a finished product; a novel is. A screenplay is a blueprint for something - for a building that will most likely never be built.

Art doesn't just happen by accident. It is about pulling out new tricks and trying new things.

Leo Tolstoy said the purpose of art is to teach you to love life. And that's what I want.

Art and commerce are not irreconciliable, they are inextricably intertwined.

I'm not really interested in the exploding car or endless sort of dystopian fantasies and superheroes. None of that... that doesn't interest me very much.

There are moments in one's life where you look back and you say, 'Well, I wish I had done this differently.

Tantalus made a wild grab, but the marshmallow committed suicide, diving into the flames.

Sub-consciousness is extremely selfish, it will do anything to keep you safe and main in a comfort zone

Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked.

I invite everyone to question their thoughts about their children and allow their children to be free. That's when we stop teaching our children fear.

We can have whatever it is we choose, I don't care how big it is. You become what you think about, but you also attract what you think about most.

Kuh-laire, Is cam a fattening Girl Scout Cookie layered with peanut butter and a chocolate coating? No. Then dont make him a tagalong!

It is not the magnitude of our actions, but the amount of love that is put into them that matters.

In thoughts one keeps a reserve of hope, in spite of everything. You cannot say good-bye in imagination. That is something you can only do in actuality.

What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it.

Muslims are right to be angry.