There's a bright spot in every dark cloud.

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.

I really hope acting is going to be my career to the end, but you don't know anything, really, do you?

Existence was really very simple when you did what you were told.

It is very important that we take care of our health.

I didn't decide I was crazy until 1952. That's when I began making a steady salary and could afford to be crazy.

My writing could be the most beautiful or important piece of prose, but it means nothing if it's boring, if people aren't listening or reading. I think transporting someone, putting them in a story for a few hours, taking them out of their worlds, is what I always strive to do.

Youth has no age.

I'm not handled. I'm not crafted by slick, high-priced consultants. I'm a real person, a genuine person, a struggling person in Connecticut.

I did my fist show, 'Godspell', in my freshman year of high school.

Learning is not attained by chance. It must be sought for with ardor and attended to with diligence.

Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

the problem is not suffering itself or oblivion itself but the depraved meaninglessness of these things, the absolutely inhuman nihilism of suffering.

I never considered the move to Washington to be a permanent move.

We are at a point in the video game industry that the industry is hollowed out. It is out of touch with the zeitgeist, creating sequels and formulaic games over and over again. The energy comes from the indies.

What birds can have their bills more peculiarly formed than the ibis, the spoonbill, and the heron?

Having a guy on a microphone yelling lines at you is counter to a lot of acting techniques.

Of course there are times when I hate London, but equally there are times when I can walk 'round a corner and I really feel that this is my place.

Barbra Streisand has accomplished so much, and Dustin Hoffman as well. They are down to earth and approachable. I admire that.

Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it.

Scientists have a tendency to believe in absolutes, in studies and the repeating of them. Psychoanalysis is firmly based in subjective accounts. We need both.

When I first left Iran at the age of 13, Iran had become such a shining star - it was the point to which all my desires and dreams returned.