I tell the actors that the biggest gift they can give me is to fail. And that the second gift they can give me is to surprise me.

You can never maintain just pure happiness. In my life, I want full emotion. I want equal parts happiness and sadness.

There's something so glorious in giving control to the world. I think that's what I'm trying to do in my films-control the world but also let it be chaotic, let there be life.

I always say writing is like dreaming, shooting is like living, and editing is like murder, because you take all these gifts that actors give you, and you cut them.

It happens sometimes that when someone has a camera, they change; sometimes they change for the better.

When I made my student film, a feature, nobody wanted to talk to me and I was, like, in the desert for 12 years.

A lawyer actually has to see all sides of a situation. Lawyers actually might be the most understanding human beings.

There's one rule that I have on my movies, which is that anything that you want to do, you can do. But! There's a flip side to that, which is that anything I want you to do, give it a try also.

Follow your passion and learn how to make money at it. Or don't follow your passion and learn to make money at that. They are the same. It's a choice.

We are so used to working that not working is the new hard work.

A poet's fantasy: Hiring a rapper to rap his rhymes.

Roman civilization had achieved, within the bounds of its technology, relatively as great a mastery of time and space as we have achieved today.

Gossip is the currency of the discourse, so you should shut up about yourself. Never confess, never explain, never apologize, and never complain.

Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.

I try to be straight when I communicate with my audiences through a film. I'm not sure whether I have been successful. I don't watch my film once they're in theaters.

Here is the crux of the matter, the distilled essence, the only thing you need to remember: When considering whether to say yes or no, you must choose the response that feels like freedom. Period.

I love amazing people. I love dazzling them. That's why I think performing magic is one of the greatest things a person can do.

The idea is that there is a kind of memory in nature. Each kind of thing has a collective memory. So, take a squirrel living in New York now. That squirrel is being influenced by all past squirrels.