For a director, the most challenging scenes are the dialogue scenes.

At HBO, they seem to be well-informed. They make what I think are really quite mature films.

With Cold Sassy Tree having its first production, I saw no necessity to do anything other than produce it with the correct setting.

Tender Mercies is a very low-budget film, but it was a huge budget compared to anything I had done in Australia. My fee for Tender Mercies was something like five times all of my Australian films combined.

The music of the most popular operas is so highly esteemed, it can stand endless revivals.

When I was 24 I went to Nigeria and it was such a culture shock, growing up in Australia and suddenly being the only white man in this unit full of black men.

Everyone has seen photographs of Mexicans wearing those big sombreros. When you come to Mexico, the astonishing thing is, nobody wears these hats at all.

There's a bright spot in every dark cloud.

I'd really been interested in opera when I was about 16, and I really like staging them.

When the music and the characters are flawlessly synchronized, the opera develops an emotional force that movies and plays cannot match.

I didn't get upset because I wasn't nominated, but I was a little surprised.

In Australia, they set up a special fund to kick films off. It was quite an enlightened sort of move. You could go to this government bureau with scripts and and get finance for films.

He's wrong. That's why his films look so terrible.

For a director, the most challenging scenes are the dialogue scenes.

The number of opera houses around the world and the high attendance rates show that opera an art form that is more popular than ever.

Quite a few operas are still being commissioned around the world, although nothing apart from audience popularity can ensure more than a few performances.

It is essential to do everything possible to attract young people to opera so they can see that it is not some antiquated art form but a repository of the most glorious music and drama that man has created.

In my view, the operas of Carlisle Floyd will find a place in the permanent repertoire.

Directing an opera is similar to directing a play. The singing must not get in the way of the drama.

In silent movies, they tended to put the camera down, and everybody walked in front of it and acted, and then they all walked off. Cutting was quite infrequent.

On stage, the audience watches from a fixed viewpoint and the director cannot retake something he doesn't like. It has to work straight through.

When we were trying to get the money for Driving Miss Daisy, everyone kept saying no one could direct it well enough to entertain an audience for 100 minutes essentially watching three people chatting in the kitchen.

It's not enough to hit the notes. There is no point in the singers just standing there and sounding wonderful if they're not connecting with the characters they are portraying.

Film is shot in fragments, and the same moments can be shot again and again until the director is satisfied.

Perhaps the most difficult thing is shooting scenes set 6,000 feet up in the mountains of Mexico.

I don't rehearse films as much as opera or theatre. When I began directing films I thought a long rehearsal was a good idea. Experience showed me that the best performance was often left in a rehearsal room.

With a film, I do my best to understand the author's intentions and try to bring the characters to life.

There were movies that always made me want to be a director. You see brilliant scenes and the way the emotions were handled. I thought, I'd really like to do that.

In opera, everyone's watching from a fixed viewpoint, and that really challenges you. Lighting, the sets, stage groupings, the music-but doesn't relate too much to film.

Sometimes in New York, you're walking down the street and you realize there's a girl walking in front of you whose thighs you could hit a golf ball through, and maybe that makes you depressed.

February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums and baseball is not even mentioned.

I think the tradition of philanthropy is far better developed in the U.S. than in India, as is the whole notion of giving away 50% of your wealth while you are still living and not waiting till you're gone.

It would be doing me great injustice to think that I have any feeling of indifference to my country; I have more reason than anyone to feel, every day of my life, the value of the blood which flows in my veins, and it is only from prudence that at times I abstain from showing how proud I am of it.

I was thrilled as a kid to point out my sister as she danced and sang on the stage, and she was pretty good artistically. She was a great inspiration to me. She was the one who sort of led me into show business.

Often people would mistake me for white when I was younger, and I didn't correct them; there would be a period of time that they just thought I was.

I'm opinionated because I care so much about the music and the songs.

The U.S. Armed Forces are the best trained, best equipped fighting forces in the world.

I love 'Sons of Anarchy.' I was so excited to be able to be on this show, just because I personally watch it. Of course, I come from Disney, and I have a lot of young fans, but I do have fans who have grown with me as well.

If Davis Cup was a little bit less or once every two years, I would be more inclined to play. But the way it is now, it is too much tennis for me.

I go to various boot camps 4-5 times a week, and I try to get some Pilates in there to thin and tone.

Once the mass of the defending infantry become possessed of low moral, the battle is as good as lost.

It turns out that no undergrad class prepares you to start a startup - you learn most of it as you do it.

There's no love more intense than the love we have for our kids - and where there is intense love, there is also intense fear lurking beneath the surface.

Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves.

It’s such a poisonous emotion because, at the end of the day, you’re no better off, you’re unhappier, and the person you’re jealous of is still successful or good-looking or whatever they are.

I am certain that most composers today would consider today's music to be rich, not to say confusing, in its enormous diversity of styles, technical procedures, and systems of esthetics.

It's a place where I could do something on a weekly basis and see if I like it.

The most peaceable way for you, if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself what he is and steal out of your company.

I grew up reading Shakespeare and Mark Twain.