Sports teams, people who follow sports teams, religion, churches, work - any company, I find that people just generally have a need to belong to something larger than themselves.

You know, when you're isolated on set for like a month, people like to get rowdy.

The way brainwashing works is subtle and takes a long time.

The trappings of a religious cult tend to fall into candlelit ceremonies and robes and group chanting and singing and prayer.

What I learned from directing, I learned from soccer, where it's like a coach-player relationship.

When people leave cults, they don't know that they left a cult.

When I hire actors I believe in their abilities.

When I was a kid, I was afraid of large group of conforming people.

When you write, no matter what, it ends up personal.

You can't write something to please someone.

A big fear of working with an actor that's never been a lead in a film before is that you're going to have to work really hard to pull a performance out of her.

When it comes to living and loving, we're all amateurs.

And I went into the new year loving myself a little less, but a little more where it actually mattered.

A turmoil of winds rushed around him, spiraling up in to the air: he was thinking.

So this is the goal: To make money by increasing net profit, while simultaneously increasing return on investment, and simultaneously increasing cash flow.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

After I came back [to China], there was still a long period of time when I felt I had nothing to do.

Do you see yourself as a victim of the world, or do you see yourself as the world?

Stem cell research has become such a polarizing issue in America... and I wanted to bring it down to the personal level, instead of the political.

Fate gives you the finger and you accept.

But time has a way of demonstrating the most stubborn are the most intelligent.