I don't know really. I've always been interested in the small picture instead of the big one, and I've always been interested in relationship pictures.

Obviously, in dealing with a relationship, sexuality has to be involved, and jealousy and emotions like that. And I don't know, I've always been intrigued by those emotions.

And I think you understand a little bit more why she falls for him. In a way, watching the French do anything is a little more fun because their gestures are different. And in that way, they make everything interesting.

The challenge, really, on any new film is to try to avoid that and achieve a few moments that aren't cliche.

If you are prepared to make a fool of yourself for them then you usually get that back. I think that there are points where you become so close to an actor, you know them so well, almost as well or better than their spouse. You have to know them, warts and all.

I was speaking to Ridley Scott the other day and he makes a film every 18 months. He's amazing really.

I don't know really. I've always been interested in the small picture instead of the big one, and I've always been interested in relationship pictures.

Their every instinct - and I have to say this is without exception - is to iron out the bumps, and It's always the bumps that are the most interesting stuff.

I wanted to make a movie about the arbitrary nature of love.

I was watching Monster's Ball, which is a fabulous movie. It's just a little gem: beautifully shot, and shot in a way I never would have done. It made me feel very old, really, because it wasn't eccentric for its own sake, it was just very original.

Foxes was a movie that didn't do a lot of business but it didn't do too badly critically and eventually they offered me other things. The interesting thing was that next I tried a film called Star Man, which Michael Douglas was producing.

I've always been interested in films where you can identify with the actors. Where you can be in their shoes and therefore be more involved if they're people that you recognize.

I feel a little schizophrenic because my life is so totally different from here, obviously. And the French values are so different from American values.

Well, I think just the fact that you are making your first film is a huge step.

So on my screenplay, on the left-hand side of the page, I will put all the ideas that refer to the scene next to it so I have some sort of pictorial reference.

I think you get better at staring into space. Especially living in the South of France.

Every time I do one I feel like I've never really quite learned anything. I always find that when I'm making a film, I find it a little bit like I'm doing it for the first time.

What I think is interesting is that the more you do, you have to invent a book of rules of what you can do and what you can't do. And the very real danger is that if your book of rules becomes a book of cliches.

The danger is that if you have a bunch of ideas that you forget to use.

The whole experience of getting an album from an artist you like and listening to it from beginning to end is sort of gone. Now it's piecemeal.

Sun Cellular is the biggest investment in my business career.

Most of our life is unimportant filled with trivial things from morning till night. But when it is transformed by love it is of interest even to the angels.

I lack confidence as an actor.

A lot of individuals out there carry a lot of proprietary information on their mobile devices, and they're not protected. It's a very target-rich environment.

Simplicity is the shortest path to a solution.

The best conversation with Stanley Kubrick is a silent one: you sit in a theatre and watch his films and you learn so much.

The world is blessed most by men who do things, and not by those who merely talk about them.

Even though you're growing up, you should never stop having fun.

I am not a hound; I am an attention-seeker. Very different animal. My kind of attention requires greater finesse.

Fidel Castro for me is like a father.

Coming out of WWII, there was the assumption, the hope, the vision of a world at peace, of a kind of Wilsonian universalism, that we and the Soviets would get along, we'd have a kind of lovefest for as far into the future as anyone could see.

I get a much more extreme reaction when I have my hair really short. I look thuggish when I shave my head and wear big boots. I walk into a newsagent and people think I'm going to jump the counter. It's a much more extreme reaction.

Being human always points and is directed to something or someone other than oneself be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter.

The fundamental weakness in the Tea Party machine is the stark difference between what the leaders of the Tea Party elite - plutocrats like the Koch Brothers -want and what the average grassroots Tea Party follower wants.

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy that makes happiness.

The best seat in the house often depends on the ballet. For instance, much of the first act of 'The Nutcracker' is domestic and small scale, so it's great to sit up close. But the second act features elaborate scenery and choreography, which are better to observe from a distance.

The greenness of Ireland is a false greenness, after all. Not that it isn't green - the place can still make you have to pull off and swallow one of your heart pills. It's that the greenness doesn't mean what it seems. It doesn't encode a pastoral past, much less a timeless vale where wee folk trip the demesne.

Passing my motorcycle theory test gave me a disproportionate feeling of greatness.

Records are just moments of achievement. They're like receipts for work done. Time goes on and people keep playing music.

Knowledge is marvelous, but wisdom is even better.

When you're doing kidney transplants, you have to find out who can exchange kidneys with whom, doing blood tests to make sure it's true. You can't just work on the preliminary data. Then you have to organize the logistics.

If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.

I think that one's art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows.