I read The Odyssey all the time. I always get something out of it.

If there’s specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can’t change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies.

I don’t see my career as this steady building to a point, it’s just a path that wanders for me to do whatever I’m interested in doing.

It’s pretty clear to me that working as a director for hire agrees with me. I like it. The films that have come out of that, I personally like better than the ones that didn’t.

I didn’t grow up thinking of movies as film, or art, but as movies, something to do on a Saturday afternoon.

Buildings designed with careful attention to aesthetics arouse and enlighten their occupants and that promotes their good health.

You learn real early to make a film and then duck, and basically that’s how I go about it.

Sometimes I would like the opportunity to do character-driven comedy and that’s really what I was trying to do in Meet The Parents. I think in a way this is a more old fashioned type...

My cow is not pretty, but it is pretty to me.

It’s very difficult to break into motion pictures, but it’s oddly easier for directors today because of independent films and cable, who have inherited for the most part those films of substance that the studios...

When he brought it to me four years ago, Rodney King had just arrived, I was involved in the clean-up of L.A. and I guess it was part of my experience.

Here’s to five miserable months on the wagon and the irreparable harm that it’s caused me.

When you’re sent something and read it, either you can see it while you read it, or you can’t.

No, I never went to college. Always regretted it, always envied people who did.

I told her it was a bigger than life musical, that all the actors were going to be about the same age, late twenties into thirties. It would be a style; a kind of surreal...

Nothing matters but the facts. Without them, the science of criminal investigation is nothing more than a guessing game.

Technical skill counts for nothing if it is used only to manufacture films which have little to do with humanity.

I’ve recently enjoyed the Paul Thomas Anderson commentaries and the David Fincher commentaries.

My ideas are always better. We have an understanding in place.

A nation devoid of art and artists cannot have a full existence.

Drink! for you know not whence you came nor why: drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.

I don’t consider myself to be particularly gifted in the way that other filmmakers are gifted.

That whole process of somebody who has all that charisma and talent, to be able to break through and make it in America is fabulous.

You know, essentially when you do a play you’re reinterpreting a work of art that already exists. That’s not what happens with a movie.

I have a lot of fans who are people of color. I think, if nothing else, I kind of understand that sense of being on the outside looking in, culturally.

Nick plays a corrupt politician, which is kind of a redundant statement.

Even in high school I was very interested in history – why people do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.

You could get in rehearsals, pre-production, anything that would actually contribute to the understanding of how a film gets made. I actually find those things increase people’s interest in a movie and like that better...

He said he wanted me to play a part, and he’s done that a couple of times before but I haven’t been available because I was making my own pictures.

My movement from painting to film was a very conscious one.

I still am somewhat guarded with my feelings. A lot of writers find it much easier to express themselves on paper. That hasn’t changed.

Maybe I’ll paint, do photography, just something else. I can see that.

I don’t know about liberal bias, but people of a liberal mentality are probably attracted in greater numbers to the arts than people of a conservative mentality.

There’s nothing more difficult to do than comedy.

I think he was explicit that it was a slave labor situation, but I was not alarmed at that point, because there were so many tragedies involved in that war. That was the first time...

As long as we, again, kind of keep earning the sequels with material and I’m confident Mike can, I’m in. You know I always want to do those. But I also want to keep going...

I like cappuccino, actually. But even a bad cup of coffee is better than no coffee at all.

No one turns down a film with Woody; it’s something everyone wants in their career as an important moment. He’s such a comedic genius, without question, so I was thrilled.

When I made my first film, I didn’t think of it as directing, so it wasn’t like I set out to become a director.

There are few things more fundamentally encouraging and stimulating than seeing someone else die.

I just produced Criminal, this remake of Nine Queens, and one of the things that appealed to me about Nine Queens is that it was a performance piece, and that’s the most fun.

Reading a novel of a private experience, very, very different, the nature of it is very different.

In order to do a musical now, a style must be developed that works for today’s audience.

Shame is an unhappy emotion invented by pietists in order to exploit the human race.

The film’s dramatic requirements should always take precedence over the mere aesthetics of editing.

It was an interesting process trying to get Bob to talk about the film because he’s such a shy person. He generally likes to talk when he really knows he has something to say.

Richard Donner is one of the few directors in Hollywood that can make whatever movie he wants exactly the way he wants it. No one will stop him.

Justice is the infrastructure of proprietorship.

Living Life Tomorrow’s fate, though thou be wise, Thou canst not tell nor yet surmise; Pass, therefore, not today in vain, For it will never come again.

I guess I didn’t feel confident enough to be searching in a big public way. I was very content at the time to toil in obscurity on things that I thought might point me in...