You can find truly original pieces of writing, but they're original because you go, "Who would have even have thought of that?," or, "Why would anyone ever want to go see that?"

That's why 'The Bourne Identity' has that sort of shaky style, because for the most part, Matt Damon and I were sneaking around Paris and shooting where we didn't have permits.

At the end of the day, it's still a show about guys who ride extremely fast motorcycles for a living.

I can't impress people with the pedigree of obscure French filmmakers that got me into film. It was Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. I really thought I wanted to make dumb action movies.

In movies, you can basically buy the audience into the theater. If you spend enough money on visual effects, even if you are lacking in story and character, you might still pull it off.

To be a lone filmmaker thousands of miles from home with nobody believing in me, that seems romantic.

I make movies for me and posterity. I'm more scared of history than I am of the studio.

If you do something that's really original, you discover why everybody else does it the other way, usually. There's a reason cliches exist, 'cause they work.

It's no secret that my process is a little bit loose and can be a little bit infuriating to a studio if they don't know what they're signing up for.

When I was shooting 'The Bourne Identity,' I had a mantra: 'How come you never see James Bond pay a phone bill?' It sounds trite, but it became the foundation of that franchise.

I probably shouldn't treat interviews as therapy sessions, but I don't keep a diary, so these end up being my way of keeping track of where I'm at and letting it all out.

There is a need to find and sing our own song to stretch our limbs and shake them in a dance so wild that nothing can roost there that stirs the yearning for solitary voyage.

Winning and losing are both very temporary things. Having done one or the other, you move ahead. Gloating over a victory or sulking over a loss is a good way to stand still.

No one looks at a television, and no one hears it. It's a poison.

I have an aversion to conformity.

[Librarians] study their field with as much determination and as much delight as open-heart surgeons.

Make sickness itself a prayer.

I'm super, super casual. I like boxer shorts or jeans or tank tops, tennis shoes and flip flops. That's about it for me.

The psychedelic experience is not a journey into the human unconscious, or into the ghost bards of our human civilization. It's a journey into the presence of the Gaian mind.

Trump's ignorance in environmental science is a threat to the entire planet.

it seems that tears and laughter, love and hate, make up the sum of life!