American movies are often very good at mining those great underlying myths that make films robustly travel across class, age, gender, culture.

I find that after a screening, people really want to come and tell you what they feel.

I think English film is very embarrassed by patriotism, generally.

I began to think that if you're a stutterer, it's about inhabiting silence, emptiness, and nothingness.

I think directors can become overly infatuated by gilt and gold, and the word "lavish" and everything being magnificent.

A lot of dramas get a bad name commercially because they are unremittingly bleak.

I think the thumb print on the throat of many people is childhood trauma that goes unprocessed and unrecognized.

The irony of a director going to film festivals is you never get to see any of the films.

American cinema tends to express a patriotic relationship to national identity on a regular basis.

Great acting is all about being in the moment, being in the present tense.

I decided to be a filmmaker when I was 12. I had utter clarity that this would be my life.

Before I met the Jesuits, I’d never encountered another group who thought that intellect and arrogance were treasures beyond price and necessities in waging wars against blasphemers, heretics.

The wait is long, my dream of you does not end.

I love what I do, and when I don't love what I do, I'll make a change.

Horror causes men to clench their fists, and in horror men join together.

I am neither in the past, nor avant-garde. My style follows life.

I have no doubt about it. I think this is a part of the nature of man, a desire for freedom, for dignified life.

I have tried getting up early, and I have tried getting up late-and the latter agrees with me best.

Action must be taken at once, there is no time to be lost.

Realize how good you really are.

I was raised Catholic and didn't like the dogma and exclusivity of that teaching but I was moved by the moral teachings and by the power of the Jesus fellow.