Matching character and actor is what a good director does.

Cinema is all about going back from shadow to light and back and forth: cinema is a place of transgression.

There is no god. I am an atheist. It is up to us to become God. We need to be elevated, to become saints. God alienates people from themselves.

Sound creates an intimate effect: the sensation to feel the place. It makes the viewer enter. You have the liberty to hear what you want.

I like the idea of challenging Hollywood on its own turf. It's important to do that.

Hollywood films are alienating to the spectator because they use too much dialogue, too much explication and leave no space for the viewer. They depress me.

Good and evil are polar concepts - one can't exist without the other.

An actor is an instrument. One needs to control them.

To retain his dignity, an artist must live in opposition. He must be critical of his country. If not, then he is worthless.

My life is existing. Cinema is certainly not my life

No matter what you accumulate from outside, or what your mind forms inside, it all comes down to the choice you make out of everything that is stored in your mind.

I want to get lost in other worlds and let my imagination travel beyond this life I know.

I assemble my ideas in pieces on a computer file, then gradually find a place for them on a piece of scaffolding I erect.

what matters most is how well you walk through the fire

I've done enough of this that I can tell early on if it's going in the wrong direction or not.

We must ask ourselves these questions as often as we dare. How will the world change if we do not question it?

I've got to bring it 'cause they're going to compare me to that Taylor [Lautner] kid, and if I don't bring it, I'm just going to get crushed.

I have a great desire to make people smile - not laugh. Laughter is too aggressive. People bare their teeth.

This is Heaven, when pain and evil cease, and when the Benignant Principle, untrammelled and uncontrolled, visits in the fulness of its power the universal frame of things.

My politics are: I'm a trustbuster. Very focused. And yeah, I'm pro-efficiency. I want the most economic activity at the lowest price possible. It's good for everybody, it's not red or blue.