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.

British actors are pretty good, by and large, at turning on at 'action' and off at 'cut.'

A stronger yuan could lead to greater Chinese asset accumulation in the U.S. and elsewhere.

I just take it one fight at a time.

I want to win medals for myself.

It is better to be a has-been than a never-was.

George Clooney, who is a moron, came here to Cannes and gave a press conference saying, 'Under no circumstances will Trump ever be president. Hillary Clinton will be the next president.' Well, we can't wait to make George Clooney eat his words.

It's important to not marginalize any people group in fiction. A complete, authentic-feeling world should include many different elements of life and culture. For this reason, my books will almost always contain people of faith.

For me, especially with the villain, it's not very interesting to write a guy who is just 100% bad.

I mean, I really don't want the federal government to be determining whether or not a person who feels certain ways about the environment or about animals or about certain religious issues should be considered an extremist. That to me is a type of thought control, mind control, which is very dangerous.

Obviously technology has become such a big presence in our lives and, I definitely know, in my life.

Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.

There were always kids better than me. Because of that, I had to learn to be a role player and do my part.

My little son, Atticus, desperately needs his dad and I haven't been there for him... and that's sad.

The goal of real healthcare reform must be high quality universal coverage in a cost effective way.

It was necessary to organize my career to remain at the top level until Salt Lake City.

Our thoughts fly therefore by themselves in this festive hour of our plant community, to the man whom we thank for the ressurection of our Nation: Adolf Hitler, the patron of German labour and German art.

I began as a fiction writer - I had written three novels in my 20s and 30s. But as my work has gravitated towards literary nonfiction, or lyric essay or poetic essay, whatever you want to call it, I'm constantly beating my head against the wall 'cause I'm teaching a genre that's no longer that exciting to me and that I'm no longer practicing.

As business people, we have to remind ourselves that it's up to us to create jobs. It's up to us as business people to drive the economy, and no one else.

Brevity never fatigues therefore brevity is always a welcome guest.

Nature was my kindergarten.

Music is not a commodity, it's a resource.

I almost got a psychology degree, I almost got a philosophy degree. I kept changing it so they couldn't make me graduate. I studied anthropology and eastern religion, epistomology, and astronomy... I took every interesting course I could find for nine years.

Be grateful for what you already have and you will attract more good things.

The way we grow is, we make investments. We've been building a natural-gas platform within Duke that started with the pipelines.