Your job is to get your audience to care about your obsessions.

There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.

You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.

Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. Let the learning continue.

As a child I had terrible asthma.

More than ninety percent of directing a picture is the right casting

Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.

I love movies - it's my whole life, and that's it.

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

Always stay open to surprise.

I’m not interested in a realistic look, not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel.

There are more riddles in a stone than in a philosopher's head

I've always considered myself to be fiercely patriotic. I love Britain - its history and the down-to-earth attitude people have.

I'm not good at watching stuff that I'm in at all. I should stop. I shouldn't watch something for the first time with a room full of people at Sundance. It's not a good idea.

I don't want to take photographs that I won't recognize as myself, and myself isn't necessarily just blankly staring at the lens.

The present is never poetic as it serves necessity, necessity, however, is prosaic.

Children used to be outside. Now the streets are empty. People are indoors looking at television or something.

Awareness without emotion is a flame without fuel.

I always go to the Agriculture Building, where they make apple cider popsicles for a dollar.

I think that the Middle East is the largest piece of unfinished business that we all have. I happen to believe in the democratization process.

Ive lived in Jakarta and have seen a lot more by living here, and I understand that theres so much more to Indonesia than just Bali and Jakarta.