I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself. You're taught not to think too deeply about things.

I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself. You're taught not to think too deeply about things.

A script is not a piece of literature it's a process.

As an old-time New Yorker, it's not that I miss the '70s and '80s or whatever. I miss the fact that there was a certain kind of energy that exists when people can live for nothing.

As barbaric is we are, it's a miracle we haven't blown ourselves off the face of the earth so far.

But I'm never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is. The limits of my imagination is the only thing that's gonna stop me.

Certain actors wanna get paid, they think working in a low-budget movie is being ripped off. But for others it's like, 'Yes, let's do it.'

I don't care if I get $50 million to do a film.

I don't have a problem with Werner Herzog.

I don't know what DVD commentaries are about. I'd like to strangle the person who came up with that concept.

I was born in the Bronx, and then my father moved us to the country at an early age.

I'm a lapsed Buddhist like I'm a lapsed Catholic. I take it to a point.

I'm about my characters.

I'm not a big fan of talking about dying. And then I make a movie where I kill everybody.

It's funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it's fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

It's only Western civilization that, God forbid, you talk about dying, when it's the only thing we know for certain, right? Everyone's going to die, so what's the big problem? 'Oh, God. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it.' I mean, I'm one of them. I'm not a big fan of talking about dying.

Life is what happens when you're doing other things, right?

Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want.

Making money is not gonna change anything about what I am, except I won't answer the door.

Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting.

Mulberry Street was the beating heart of the Italian-American experience, but you don't find those gangsters now. I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

My existence is about making movies, so I've just got to rock and roll with the punches. You want to make movies on telephones, I'm there.

That's the thing about making a movie: You never finish editing. They just take it away from you.

The last day of your life is still going to be a day.

The secret is not to make a film that causes something like Virginia Tech to happen. The secret is to make a film that stops it happening.

Where I come from you're not raised to think on your own. It's not that you're pushed to read the Bible. The Bible is read to you.

With 'New Rose Hotel,' I knew that I was getting paid a $100,000 fee to write, produce, and direct, and that's all I was going to get.

My name is James Guckert. Well, when you read it, it's always pronounced some other way.

Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.

I happen to enjoy grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches.

Since I graduated college, all I have ever done for a living was acting.

I'm not out to conquer anything, which I think is a good thing. That's why I also think crazy, different things come my way. I really don't have an agenda, and I'm really happy not to have one. I'm just keeping it light.

As the camera, I try to subordinate every word to be truthful and honest to each character's context.

First of all, Saddam did not win the war, even though he says he did, I mean, you know, that's a joke and everybody in the world knows it.

I don't care what other people think. I don't think it matters.

The rapid growth in many of our suburbs has spawned a booming construction industry eager to hire low wage immigrants who gladly fill these jobs, many of them happy to be paid in cash, free of federal and state taxes.

Tequila is like Duck tape, it fixes damn nearly everything.

I basically apply with my teams the lean startup principles I used in the private sector - go into Silicon Valley mode, work at startup speed, and attack, doing things in short amounts of time with extremely limited resources.

There was a whole language that I could never make function for myself in relationship to painting and that was attitudes like tortured, struggle, pain.

I rode on a float in one of the parades in Mississippi. It's an experience.

That which does not kill us makes us stronger

Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.

I wanted to figure out how long to cook things. I did some experiments and then wrote a program using Mathematica to model how heat is transferred through food.

Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.

I'm an equal opportunity despiser.

Letting go of your painful past is how you open yourself to a wonderful future.

There is a soul of truth in error; there is a soul of good in evil.

I really think you can manifest your dreams. You can manifest your destiny. If you want something hard enough and you're willing to work for it, I think you can get it. I truly believe that.

Whoever wants Yesh Atid in the government has to vote for us - there's no other choice.