The first film is everything you want to say and how you want to say it. Lots of directors will do that and do it really well, but the second film is not so easy.

I put everything I can into the mulberry of my mind and hope that it is going to ferment and make a decent wine. How that process happens, I'm sorry to tell you I can't describe.

If you listen, you learn; if you talk, you don't.

As Beckett said, it's not enough to die, one has to be forgotten as well.

Each day, as you get older, there is a new perspective on life. It's a progression of some sort.

Society is constantly recalibrating, redefining what it considers to be moral and immoral.

Life is full of ironies and paradoxes.

I never had any ambition to be a star, or whatever it is called, and I'm still embarrassed at the word.

Pretending to be other people is my game and that to me is the essence of the whole business of acting.

The only concession you can make is to what you believe is right.

Nudes are the greatest to paint. Everything you can find in a landscape or a still life or anything else is there: darkness and light, character dimension, texture. I painted heads too, of course.

The human voice was the first instrument and remains the most powerful and effective method of musical creation and emotional transference.

Sufism is always systematised only for limited or transitory periods: because Sufism is primarly instrumental, not for enjoyment or display.

He who fears to weep, should learn to be kind to those who weep.

When people hit on feeling a certain melancholy or elation, it's a really exciting moment. I think making that connection is the goal, and what makes something great.

The lesson of September the 11th is: Take threats before they fully materialize.

Mustard's no good without roast beef.

I'm a lucky guy. I don't take for granted, for one minute, what I do.

I'm getting paid to do what I got in trouble for in the 7th grade. I absolutely love what I do and thank my lucky stars for twenty-five years of full-time employment in this business.

I fail sometimes, I succeed sometimes, so that's fair enough. It's a package deal. It comes with that package: failures and success.

People do not persist in their vices because they are not weary of them, but because they cannot leave them off. It is the nature of vice to leave us no resource but in itself.