No matter how many obstacles that are thrown in our path, there are ways to except them and to live through them.
No one can actually define love, but you attempt to, and the closest you can get is longing. And that itself has a melancholy to it. You can say dread, or doom - it's that feeling we all feel when we fall in love with someone: we have this horrible, fearful feeling that maybe we will never have that person in our life.
We are ultimately alone in that we are ultimately responsible for ourselves.
We don't function well as human beings when we're in isolation.
Working with actors who are directors is magnificent. Because they understand the art form intimately, and they know exactly how everything works.
When I was a kid, I loved action, war, horror, monster movies... Anything with special effects. I was fascinated with how'd they do that.
I think the only thing filmmakers can do is try to make good movies and make them as long as they allow us to keep making them. But at the end of the day, it is a business, and if audiences don't care, there's nothing we can do. It'll just go away, I guess.
I think that technological tools that filmmakers use to tell stories, in a perfect world, need to become invisible. When it's brand new and it's never been seen before and you're birthing this stuff, it's very much on people's minds.
Understand life's mysteries - as mysteries to be lived.
When they invented the Steadicam, every movie had to have a fight in a stairwell. Whenever there's a new thing, it's abused until artists realize what a Steadicam as a tool can be. And now I defy people to be able to see Steadicam shots, because we know how to do them and make them invisible.
Because movies have gotten so expensive, and they're so expensive to market, that means that for a movie to break even or to make its money back, everybody has to go see the movie, and if everybody has to go see the movie, then it can't be about anything.
You can't legislate sobriety.
I grew up on Chicago's South Side in a working-poor family, so I watched everything on television. It was like my window on the world. But we also went to the movies pretty regularly - mostly on Tuesdays, because that was Ladies Night, and my mom could get in for free.
From where I sit, I see the digital cinema creating sloppiness on the part of filmmakers because they know if they really get in trouble, they can fix it later. So they don't pay that much attention, and of course it costs a lot more money.
Favorite movie lists are impossible for me to do.
It's the most unrealistic thing you can do to shoot a close-up, and it's the most unrealistic place you can be as a performer. And yet actors grouse about having to do visual effect shots, but they love doing close-ups.
I could never be like Hitchcock and do only one kind of movie. Anything that's good is worthwhile.
I'm addicted to documentaries. That's all I watch on television.
Most actors that I work with are wonderful. Jodie Foster or Tom Hanks will make anything work.
You just have to do your art. Nothing can stop you.
