At first, I wasn't sure whether I'd be a critic or a filmmaker, but I knew it would be something like that.

An actor is never so great as when he reminds you of an animal - falling like a cat, lying like a dog, moving like a fox.

All film directors, whether famous or obscure, regard themselves as misunderstood or underrated. Because of that, they all lie. They're obliged to overstate their own importance.

I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between.

There are no good and bad movies, only good and bad directors

When I begin a film, I want to make a great film. Halfway through, I just hope to finish the film.

In love, women are professionals, men are amateurs.

The most beautiful thing I have ever seen in a movie theatre is to go down to the front and turn around, and look at all the uplifted faces, the light from the screen reflected upon them.

I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself.

Taste is a result of a thousand distastes.

Some day I'll make a film that critics will like. When I have money to waste.

...she said all writers were prima donnas, drunks, social misfits, pompous, or depressed. Brilliant, maybe, but completely crazy.

Encouragement is the most effective way to change someone’s behavior. When you see the best in them you encourage them to become that and they will want to live up to your high opinion of them.

Every good thing that has happened in your life happened because something changed.

If anyone feels his sins, let him come at once, straight, direct, not merely to church, or to the sacrament, or to repentance, or to prayer, but to Christ Himself.

I think that you're just as close to Jesus if you use the equipment he gave you other than to call on him to do for you what you can do for yourself.

When I see something unjust, I have to intervene - it's hard for me to watch the underdog suffer.

I should say here, because some in Washington like to dream up ways to control the Internet, that we don't need to 'control' free speech, we need to control ourselves.

When I'm wearing too-high heels and swaying my hips, I do that Sharon Stone kind of thing - she has the sexiest walk, a New York cool thing that throws you back.

Poverty and contempt generally go hand-in-hand in this world.

I have a rule: I will not alter the basic history of a real-life character to suit our fictional needs in a big way.