I think there's only one or two films where I've had all the financial support I needed. All the rest, I wish I'd had the money to shoot another ten days.

There's no such thing as simple. Simple is hard.

You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it.

Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. Let the learning continue.

As a child I had terrible asthma.

More than ninety percent of directing a picture is the right casting

Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.

I love movies - it's my whole life, and that's it.

Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.

Always stay open to surprise.

I’m not interested in a realistic look, not at all, not ever. Every film should look the way I feel.

A mind filled with negative thoughts makes you feel miserable and inadequate and will lead to failure after failure no matter how hard you try to succeed.

Not all forms of abuse leave bruises.

Generally the man with a good wife or the woman with a good husband or the children with good parents discover too late the goodness they overlooked while it was in full bloom.

Jesus wept Voltaire smiled. From that divine tear and from that human smile is derived the grace of present civilization.

These are the roots of trees, O monks, these are empty huts. Meditate, monks, do not be negligent, or else you will regret it later. This is our instruction to you.

When you have a global mush, people lose their identity, they become pseudonyms, they have no investment and no consequence in what they do.

A man who is really earnest must begin with himself, he must be passively aware of all his thoughts, feelings and actions.

. . . long journeys are strange things: if we were always to continue in the same mind we are in at the end of a journey, we should never stir from the place we were then in . . .

You never know what the future brings.

Nobody has the intention of building a wall