I don't need to push myself. I don't need to sharpen my own knife and slit my throat. I'm trying to chill it and find an equilibrium and a balance to my work.

I come from a world where you get the film done, that's a success.

Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting.

That's the thing about making a movie: You never finish editing. They just take it away from you.

My life is proof that I don't need you to do what I do. If there's no one to see it, I'll watch it.

I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself. You're taught not to think too deeply about things.

As barbaric is we are, it's a miracle we haven't blown ourselves off the face of the earth so far.

Mulberry Street was the beating heart of the Italian-American experience, but you don't find those gangsters now. I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

It's funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it's fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

I direct, and I make movies I can't finance. I can't raise money. I can't sell anything. I make things.

Family. Friendship. Loyalty. These things have been my guiding stars, my light in these dark times.

Why would a book in which hardly anything happened for most of the time eat at me so much? It was the weirdest thing

Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.

I think it's a given that people know what I can do vocally.

I don't say that I don't believe in God because that implies that there is a God for me not to believe in.

Ideas often flash across our minds more complete than we could make them after much labor.

We should be willing to spend the money in return for the innovation.

We are worse off - all of us, including men and boys - if our society is not developing and empowering 100% of the resources of humanity, including women and girls.

Jesus communicated parables to the secular people around him and he used stories that were very relevant to their lives, and He was taking heaven's truth and packaging it in an earthly context.

Love is meant to lift you up, not hold you down.