You can't really just think, "Oh, I want to make something that is going to appeal to every single person in the world." You have to just try to make a movie that comes from your heart.

People love to talk, so let them have fun talking.

As a director, you've got to have quite a few projects going because you never know which one will actually come together with the financing and get the green light.

If a scene doesn't work on three levels - it's not advancing the story, the characters, and telling me something new - then put it in the trash.

I thought, "If I can make you feel what it's like for that first super-passionate love, other people might like that too," and, of course, they did.

Since I was a little kid, I did like fairy tale. I did dress up like Little Red Riding Hood. My mom had to make me a cape.

I thought it would be quite a challenge to direct a mystery thriller. I hadn't really done something like that.

When I was just five years old, I loved the scary layer and the symbolical power of the red cloak. I made my mom make me that red cloak, and I had to wear it on Halloween, two years in a row.

When you're in the editing process, you try different things and you get creative ideas.

When I talk to film students, I always say, "Buy the DVDs and listen to the commentaries, look at the making of, look at the behind-the-scenes," because that's such a great learning tool.

Usually, we have some of those nostalgic moments like, "Oh my god, I can't believe we survived that day," because filmmaking is such a wild roller coaster ride.

Liberty a word without which all other words are vain.

I am a link in a chain

Pity. What a useless emotion when you don't act on it. Pity is supposed to trigger compassion.

My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.

When a man holds you round the throat, I don't think he has come to apologise.

Well, back when I was training, probably the only nutritious thing on the market was Gatorade - that's all that we knew.

The salvation of a single soul is more important than the production or preservation of all the epics and tragedies in the world.

When I say or do something I do it, I don't give a damn what you think, I'm doing this for me.

Life is too short to make an over-serious business out of it.

Faith is essentially intolerant ... essentially because necessarily bound up with faith is the illusion that one's cause is also God's cause.