Whereas to write, all you need is paper and an idea, so I felt that writing might be my stepping stone.

I had a checkered early career, for sure, with a lot of very unhappy experiences where pictures got taken away, re-cut, re-titled... all the nightmares one hears about.

What you care about [movie] is whether it's moving you, or whether you're caught up in it.

Hollywood, of course, is the city of illusion.

You can dress it up, but it comes down to the fact that a movie is only as good as its script.

Self-awareness and self-esteem. Those aren't female issues, those are human issues.

Put simply, there are many people who want to make movies and very few opportunities for them to do it.

I grew up as a reader as well as a movie-lover, so many of the novelists I admired - and so many of the great filmmakers I loved - were self-taught.

Consequently, it's so gratifying to then make a picture that's successful and gives you leverage to have better circumstances than you've ever had, before the next time out.

Consequently, their school [film-school ] was the school of life, and it was very much reflected in their work.

You can imagine what it was like for me to actually be sitting in a room with matching typewriters, working under the tutelage of this guy I so admired, both as a filmmaker and as a man.

When I was really young I used to collect frog spawn. I made a pond out of an old sink and I loved to spend hours watching the frogs grow.

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones.

That every day should be a fiesta seemed to me a wonderful discovery.

People think they can tame the earth. How absurd! The vanity of human wishes is endless. It is more fun to dance with life.

I think Russian people are learning that democracy is not an alien thing; it's not a western invention.

We have North Shore, Hawaii and Lost all there, so they have softball tournaments between the casts. It's hilarious.

I approach everything in my life the same way; if it feels right, I know it.

It's amazing. I can do anything. And do it well. Any good thing, I can do it. That's why I am who I am, yes, because God loves me and I'm amazed at it. I'm grateful for it.

If he wins a fourth Super Bowl, he's the greatest ever in my book.

Part of your process of becoming an adult is admitting to yourself that The Doors were a shitty band.