I'm in five guilds; that's a lot of dues to pay. So I have to keep on working.

But I remember feeling as a producer I felt like the guy who called the caterer and got the band; I had to work the party while everybody else was having a good time.

On every movie I've done as a director, I look at the producers and having done it, I don't envy them, at all.

In the '80s, I can't say that Amy and I were aware of an independent film community. We could only get a certain amount of money for our pictures, which made them low budget movies, but they were distributed through studios.

As a director, I've been able to combine with what I've learned as an actor and as a producer: it melds quite nicely into what I feel like I should have been doing all along.

Every movie is wildly different. So many of the problems are the same, but they take on different guises.

I've always been schizophrenic; I've never been interested in limiting myself.

I'm in five guilds; that's a lot of dues to pay. So I have to keep on working.

And I like being able to go back and forth, and I don't really care if it's a small budget or big budget or studio or independent, as long as it's got a story that's compelling and there's enough money to make the picture.

But at the same time, never having final cut before, I really learned an interesting thing for any studio executive who is reading this: that if a director has final cut, it's actually easier and more interesting to listen to notes.

It struck me that working digitally with a small crew, I could lay out a general plan for Famous and hope for mistakes which would create something more than satire and something less than truthful reality.

I only got to be able to act, because I gave myself a job as a producer.

My hunger and desperation, being an actor, an out of work actor - my memory of that is as fresh as an open wound.

I met Steve McQueen once. Well, met isn't really the right word.

I'm being told it saves money to shoot in Toronto, because of tax benefits, the crews are cheaper, but what I save in the bottom line, I lose in a million other ways.

New York means so much to people. If you're inclined to leave the nest, New York is where most people think they have to go, and it's been that way since the first skyscraper.

I came to New York to be an actor and I became a film producer first.

I think we were the first picture to cut on Final Cut Pro. So we were the guinea pigs, because we got a deal on the system. But with that comes all sorts of technological problems I couldn't begin to describe.

If movies are set in New York, they really should be shot in New York.

Although there was a screenplay, the actors never knew what questions I was going to ask them, and all of my character's voice-over narration and scenes were added after the fact.

I produced six movies with Amy Robinson since the very early '80s.

Documentaries have always inspired me in narrative filmmaking.

You got to be brave. If you feel something, you've really got to risk it.

From the director's point of view, it's infinitely easier to do violence than to do a good dramatic scene.

We have one cat. I had eight cats and six dogs in Los Angeles.

Most of the most important experiences that truly educate cannot be arranged ahead of time with any precision.

The E.U. cannot act as guardian of the post-Cold War status quo without risking a collapse of Europe's current institutional infrastructure.

Too many actors have run for office. There's one difference between me and them: I know I'm not qualified.

I never got into this business thinking I'd be like a movie star.

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

Baseball is a public trust. Players turn over, owners turn over and certain commissioners turn over. But baseball goes on.

We cannot afford to walk down that dangerous path of government overstepping its boundaries into the most personal parts of our lives.

Kids, help your parents if they don't know how to use a smartphone.

I think we're very uptight in America. You have to remember that we're descended from Puritans. Whether or not the country is now composed of immigrants, our culture as American really begins with the landing of the Pilgrims and a puritanical view of things.

Twitter was a mere prototype in 2006; now, many of us have become adept at saying all we have to say in 140 characters.

I became very successful at a young age... I had lots of opportunities and lots of power and had no idea how to focus it.

We sit around waiting for them to come home, hoping every day that they are okay and that they know how much we love them our heroes.

I have a study now - I used not to. I also love working in cafes; ignoring noise is good for concentration.

Being an actor: that's a pretty big net. That's a big playing field. The Screen Actors' Guild is filled with many, many, many, many people and vastly different careers.

But I think we are seeing a resurgence of the graphic ghost story like The Others, Devil's Backbone and The Sixth Sense. It is a return to more gothic atmospheric ghost storytelling.

The Fifth Amendment speaks specifically to denying someone their life and liberty without due process. That is what H.R. 2 does, and I rise in opposition to it. And I rise in opposition because it is important that we preserve lives and we recognize that 40 million-plus are uninsured.

I will live and die by this testimony: that I loved a good conscience; that I never invaded another man's liberty; and that I preserved my own.

We hire people who are freaks. They don't have social lives.

Economics is a subject that does not greatly respect ones wishes.

We live in a culture where we're bombarded with so much noise and so much insecurity.

I have the support of my parents and my teachers. They made it very possible for me to go to a school that is open and supportive of me being gone at times and pursuing acting. But school always comes first for me.