You've got to work. You've got to want an audience to sit forward in their chairs sometimes, rather than sit back and be bombarded with images.

Listen, you make a big movie, you're going into the Coliseum, and people are going to give you the thumbs up or the thumbs down. And that's part of the game. It's part of the fun as well.

When I drive through a field, I want to see green grass sometimes, and I don't want to see black and white.

Confidence is essential, but ego is not.

Actors get pigeonholed very quickly, particularly movie actors. In the theater, one is more used to casting people against type and trusting that their talent and skill will get them through.

Truly great actors carry their characters in silence with them. They communicate without words the relationships that predate the movie.

I think movies are a director's medium in the end. Theater is the actor's medium. Theater is fast, and enjoyable, and truly rewarding. I believe in great live performance.

You think about taking audiences on a journey.

You've got to believe as a filmmaker that if a movie's good enough, it's going to survive; and if it's not, well, it won't.

This is the first time in 10 years I don't know what I'm doing next and I'm rather enjoying it. Soon I'll be climbing the walls no doubt, but right now, it's not clear, I'm just enjoying the freedom.

The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words.

When ill luck begins, it does not come in sprinkles, but in showers.

I had good innings, as the British say. I wrote for 38 years at the top of my form, and I wanted to quit on a high note.

The reality you experience is a reflection of what you believe is most possible.

Americans are fickle. And what constitutes the enemy is always changing. Believe it or not, at one time Blacks were the favored model minority over Asian Americans.

Music is on a higher plane than everything else in this world.

No one so dislikes being punished unjustly as the person who might have been punished justly on scores of previous occasions, if he had only been found out.

I'm 42 now, what I would consider prime time.

I never went to any of the Hollywood child parties.

You can't buy ATP points to buy your ranking. It's not possible; otherwise Gulbis would be No. 1 in the world.