I'm interested in what actors reveal about themselves through the structure of the character.

To be a creative person and be a professional, as an artist you have to be able to withstand pain, rejection, and for some, a lot of bad feelings, but you have to be able to look through those.

All history is defined by shifting modes of reality and time and how things change. That’s what I love about cinema. It changes in the moment.

By 1988, I was living in New York myself.

To me, honesty and the difficulty of honest communication are at the heart of both my life and my movies. The difficulty of being yourself.

You are always factoring in the economy within the process of creating something, and making decisions that seem both fearless and full of fear.

I'm a version of the same person.

I actually feel that all drama has an element of comedy in it. A great deal of that I learned from writers like Chekhov who called his plays his comedy even when they touch on tragedy.

The questions of economics, and how they infect, or rather how they affect intimacy. And that's probably the subject of all my films.

For me, an actor is really, first and foremost, a person and an individual, more than they are an actor or a professional.

I'm someone who can create critiques of individuals based on their economic history. That's one way I look at people in terms of one story that could be told purely in a Marxist construction.

Invest your energy in the things you can control.

I thought doctors were supposed to make you better not worse!

If people looked at the stars each night, they'd live a lot differently. When you look into infinity, you realize that there are more important things than what people do all day.

I'm the only person on Earth who's not afraid to admit that black people are better dancers than white people! I said it, I said it! You were all thinking it, I said it!

Birds are the most accomplished aeronauts the world has ever seen. They fly high and low, at great speed, and very slowly. And always with extraordinary precision and control.

Take a firm grasp on God’s sovereignty and trust His love even when you don’t understand His purpose.

Yesterday is history Tomorrow's a mystery

English history is all about men liking their fathers, and American history is all about men hating their fathers and trying to burn down everything they ever did.

I've always said it's interesting to watch devils cry when angels want to stab you in the back. I like that mixture.

Effective visions are lived in details, not broad strokes.