The unconscious is our best collaborator.

There’s nothing better than discovering, to your own astonishment, what you’re meant to do. It’s like falling in love.

I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That’s the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein.

Any good movie is filled with secrets.

There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw.

A movie is like a person. Either you trust it or you don't.

Being with an insanely jealous person is like being in the room with a dead mammoth.

I was just trying to make a nice little movie... It wasn't until I saw it all put together that I realized this was something remarkable.

I love the editing process of making movies. I just wish that life had one.

I have never understood people dividing things into dramas and comedies.

I came to love silence, because it's so rare, and it's now my favorite aural condition.

To bring relevance to people, you have to be able to speak their language effectively

War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of.

First, a few words about this title. It isn't easy, coming up with book titles. A lot of the really good ones are taken. Thin Thighs in 30 Days, for example. Also The Bible.

It's like a whole orchestra, the piano for me. And also it's to me the greatest instrument. I shouldn't say that, but I believe that this is the only instrument I can really feel happy about playing.

The only Jews who interest us are our fellow citizens... Basically and profoundly, we are with the West.

It's good to kind of get away from the star treatment.

If the United States had not intervened in Afghanistan, then obviously, we would have then allowed the attacks of 9/11 to go unanswered. I don't think most of Americans wanted that to happen.

In the country of pain we are each alone.

I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest.

It's the worst form of torture a person can imagine-the wait to die.