I grew up pretty peacefully, in that Eastern way. You easily solve problems, believe in harmony. Reduce conflicts, take orders until one day you give orders.

We need storytelling. Otherwise life just goes on and on, like the number Pi.

I see a movie as a way of learning about the world, about myself, and learning about my relationship with people and art.

I think the American West really attracts me because it's romantic. The desert, the empty space, the drama.

My hometown was one of the major U.S. Air Force bases.

I think people are universal.

Sometimes, you have to get angry to get things done.

Every movie I make. That’s my hideout, the place I don’t quite understand, but feel most at home.

When there is a strong woman character in a story - that always grabs me

I think great romance needs great obstacles and textures.

Making movies is a way of understanding myself and the world.

He has a magic touch. He can turn a G into a C. My heart was made of gold

Humans can be anything you want, Only when alone.

Life has not taught me to expect nothing but she has taught me not to expect success to be the inevitable result of my endeavors.

It's good to have a reminder that we can love ourselves and be beautiful even though we don't really fit into certain standards of what beauty may be.

We have so many different options now and ways to communicate digitally. But I don't think anything is more meaningful or powerful than a hand-written letter.

I don't have to talk. My record speaks for itself.

I come from a really lovely, really smart family where the only stress was money and employment.

Now death is with us in such abundance and hovers over us in so massive a form that we don't have time to invent a mythology, nor is our creativity directed toward same. Now it's to prevent death.

Suppose you succeed in breaking the wall with your head. And what, then, will you do in the next cell?

Ladies and gentlemen....." His voice is quiet, but mine rings through the room. "Let the Seventy-sixth Hunger Games begin!