I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist, the solo flute for Toscanini.

I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.

When I was about 9, I had polio, and people were very frightened for their children, so you tended to be isolated. I was paralyzed for a while, so I watched television.

An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?

I used to love going into local hardware stores, to look at little things they made locally. Nowadays it's harder, though you can still do it in Vietnam.

I had an older brother who was very interested in literature, so I had an early exposure to literature, and and theater. My father sometimes would work in musical comedies.

There's nothing creative about living within your means.

Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.

We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn't speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.

You don't have to specialize - do everything that you love and then, at some time, the future will come together for you in some form.

If the movie works, nobody notices the mistakes... If the movie doesn't work, the only thing people notice are mistakes.

I don't want to be a tree

Introduction of deus ex machina is a tell-tale sign of sloppy plotting.

Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.

It seems to me that government is like a pump and what it pumps up is just what we are a fair sample of the intellect the ethics and the morals of the people no better no worse.

The west is broken into bars Of orange gold and gray Gone is the sun come are the stars And night infolds the day.

It is easy for men to write and talk like philosophers, but to act with wisdom, there is the rub!

I find that Americans are all in the middle somewhere, except for the extreme nuts, and extreme nuts on both sides are the loudest. And that's why it feels like we are polarized.

I thought, I loved Batman, I loved Spider-Man, I love all these characters, but Catwoman is really different from any other one.

The thing about fantasy - there are certain things you just don't do in fantasy.

Incidentally, I'm still looking for acting work, my first love.