When I was building the Vietnam Memorial, I never once asked the veterans what it was like in the war, because from my point of view, you don't pry into other people's business.

Sometimes I think creativity is magic; it's not a matter of finding an idea, but allowing the idea to find you.

A lot of my works deal with a passage, which is about time. I don't see anything that I do as a static object in space. It has to exist as a journey in time.

I probably have fundamentally antisocial tendencies. I never took one extracurricular activity. I just failed utterly at that level. Part of me still rebels against that.

To fly we have to have resistance.

An artist fights to retain the integrity of a work so that it remains a strong, clear vision. Art is and should be the act of an individual willing to say something new, something not quite familiar.

Our lives are given meaning by our actions-accomplishments made while we are "here" that extend beyond our own time.

If we forget what used to be, then we’ve lost an ability to really be sensitive to our surroundings.

You have to let the viewers come away with their own conclusions. If you dictate what they should think, you've lost it.

I didn't have anyone to play with so I made up my own world.

OK, it was black, it was below grade, I was female, Asian American, young, too young to have served. Yet I think none of the opposition in that sense hurt me.

Two people kissing always look like fish.

I am basically a religious man.

Film is our literature, so we should tell stories that are apropos of our culture, in that we can learn something about ourselves.

Longing on a large scale makes history.

Basically, I composed the musical structure in one pass. The rest was editing and small adjustments. And when the play was read by actors with the music, the sequence timed-out perfectly.

America is White and Black and Latino and Asian. America is mixed. America is immigrants.

The most certain sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that of things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.

There's a war going on outside no man is safe from. You can run but you can't hide forever.

Your uncle," Poseidon sighed, "has always had a flair for dramatic exits. I think he would've done well as the god of theater.

I wouldn't be doing motherfu**ing films for almost three decades if every time I did something that someone didn't like I went in a fu**ing cocoon and just hid there and didn't make my art.