As a director you want to show the truth of people and sometimes that's unflattering, or it's not something that people want to see.

I'm not interested in doing a simple, straightforward action movie, unless they want to pay me lots of money.

My philosophy is always, "Let's get the spirit of the character." If people believe in it and the spirit of it, then it will work.

If you try to do a look-alike and an impersonation, then that's just not conducive to good drama.

The thing about Hitchcock is that, however much one dissects him, he still manages to hang onto his mystery. You can never quite get to the bottom of him.

I'm looking for richness, complexity, and characters that have different layers and that you don't really get bored of.

There's so much energy that's needed, for every stage of the process, so I don't want to do something that I'm bored by with characters that I don't like or actors that aren't going to surprise you.

Believe, my child. Faith is the food of survival.

Compassion is the way you live your life every day.

When the meaning is unclear there is no meaning.

feelings existed in only one form: magnified.

The great take steps to success, the extraordinary take leaps to success, and the remarkable take flight to success.

It's hard to see a halo when you're looking for horns.

Be sensitive to subtle differences between 'intuition' and 'into wishing'.

That was okay [ working with George Clooney]. One of these days I'll work with a good director.

Two sources of success are known: wisdom and effort; make them both thine own, if thou wouldst haply rise.

Egypt, the Egypt of antiquity, at a later time, exercised a mysterious fascination over me. I recognized a picture of it immediately, without hesitation and astonishment, in an illustrated magazine.