Observing life, living through it. As you experience life some events call upon you to suffer through them and that's what brings inspiration.

There are things which are without answers, and there is nobody who can explain them. Either we feel them and sense them, or not. Sometimes we just give up and carry on.

The most important thing for me is the image, not the thought.

Art is not some sort of guideline for understanding. It's a thing unto itself.

Everything that fed my energy and imagination is something that I'm disinclined to speak about.

What I know is that I am honest about my films, and my films are honest about reality. The stories themselves dictate the way that they should be told.

I knew, starting in 10th grade, I wanted to be in theater and an actor. I went to acting school in Siberia, but there was no future there - and I was consumed with ambition.

It takes a fool to rush off to war!

I'm not in the business of reading tea leaves. I don't have a crystal ball.

This whole pre-criminal investigation, where we watch everybody, all the time, just in case, is really an extraordinary departure from the Western liberal tradition.

Art is so wonderfully irrational, exuberantly pointless, but necessary all the same. Pointless and yet necessary, that's hard for a puritan to understand.

I had no books at home. I started to frequent a public library in Lisbon. It was there, with no help except curiosity and the will to learn, that my taste for reading developed and was refined.

You can turn a giant into a mouse just by getting him fatigued. That was my whole game plan.

Humans are not ideally set up to understand logic; they are ideally set up to understand stories.

I'm a songwriter. I've got ideas in the closet that just didn't work out with my band, that I think, "This is a great idea, it's just the wrong guys."

I've done great theatre, great films and had a lot of opportunities in television. I also love to sing, and I've been able to do that once or twice in the television shows.

The smartest side to take in a bidding war is the losing side.