In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something.

I have no problem being with people of different nationalities.

Someone knocks at the door of an apartment to borrow salt or sugar, people run into each other in the elevator, and in this way become inscribed in the spectator's memory.

We're always looking at this love through the eyes of the person who is suffering because of this love.

To tell you the truth, in my work, love is always in opposition to the elements. It creates dilemmas. It brings in suffering. We can't live with it, and we can't live without it. You'll rarely find a happy ending in my work.

The television industry doesn't like to see the compexity of the world. It prefers simple reporting, with simple ideas: this is white, that's black; this is good, that's bad.

Of course I'd like to get beyond the concrete. But it's really difficult. Very difficult.

Maybe it is worth investigating the unknown, if only because the very feeling of not knowing is a painful one.

In real life, there are names that surprise us because they don't seem to suit the person at all.

For me optimism is two lovers walking into the sunset arm in arm. Or maybe into the sunrise - whatever appeals to you.

There are mysteries, secret zones in each individual.

In believing too much in rationality, our contemporaries have lost something.

Do people really want liberty, equality, fraternity? Is it not some manner of speaking?

Different people in different parts of the world can be thinking the same thoughts at the same time. It's an obsession of mine: that different people in different places are thinking the same thing but for different reasons. I try to make films which connect people.

Documentaries deal with people who live real, everyday lives. But if these people trusted us and told us the truth about their lives, it could be used against them - which sometimes happened.

I believe the life of every person is worthy of scrutiny, containing its own secrets and dramas.

I have one good characteristic: I'm a pessimist, so I always imagine the worst - always. To me, the future is a black hole.

I like chance meetings - life is full of them. Every day, without realising it, I pass people whom I should know.

I really don't know anything about music, and it's no great experience for me. But I do think that music has a purifying element.

I was happy when I got into film school. I'd simply satisfied my ambition to show them that I could get in - nothing else - although I do believe they shouldn't have accepted me. I was a complete idiot. I can't understand why they took me. Probably because I'd tried three times.

If I have a goal, then it is to escape from this literalism. I'll never achieve it; in the same way that I'll never manage to describe what really dwells within my character, although I keep on trying.

In believing too much in rationality our contemporaries have lost something.

The realm of superstitions, fortune-telling, presentiments, intuition, dreams, all this is the inner life of a human being, and all this is the hardest thing to film.

I've lived a charmed life. I married the only girl I ever loved and did the only job I ever loved.

I believe that music in itself heals and that everything is about the power of the mind. I thought if you are happy, you don't get ill. Your health is in your head. When you are satisfied with your work, you don't get ill.

We do nods to Charlie's Angels and Mission Impossible because they are popular with our fan base.

People have all these preconceptions about me. Whereas if you look at the roles, Henry Hill was the nicest guy in 'Goodfellas!' I was a nice guy too in the comedy 'Heartbreakers.' And I was a really sweet father to Johnny Depp in 'Blow!'

Daydreaming allows you to play out scenarios where you miraculously save the day. You play out scenarios in your head that are kind of crazy, and then you personally, heroically resolve them.

I get really frustrated during a crisis when I go through all the cable channels and find - very often with the exception of CNN - that I'm not watching news at all. You think, 'Well, God... there are talk shows, talk shows, talk shows and everyone is an expert!'

When you are doing stand-up comedy, you are the writer, producer, director, sometimes bouncer.

I'm pathologically incapable of making decisions. Just ask my wife how long it took me to propose - on second thought, best not to bring it up.

The finest chroniclers of the great and the near-great have often been courtiers - the Duc de Saint-Simon, for instance, or Lady Murasaki.

When I define polarities in my work, I actually create the space between things. I point to the question I am actually interested in, without naming it.

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

The good old days when each idea had an owner are gone forever.

The First Amendment applies to rogues and scoundrels. You don't lose your First Amendment rights because of a sleazy personality, or even for having committed a crime. Felons in jail are protected by the First Amendment.

There aren't any fences to the imagination, and so there shouldn't be any for books.

Well I'm a very similar age to Prince Charles. I'm a year older than him. I was at university at the same time as him. I think in the sixties, like all the Royals, he really had very little impact on my life at all and he seemed, if anything a lot older in his attitudes.

France has not only built a bureaucratic barrier against American culture, it has constructed a notorious intellectual case against it as well. The French spend hundreds of millions of dollars subsidizing film production, extend interest-free loans to designated filmmakers, and have placed quotas not only on imports but on television time.

The more you learn about animals and animal rights - it's an intriguing, fascinating world.

This thing called Patriot Act, through which we abdicated a lot of our civil rights to defend the country against terrorism, it's a four-year story.

I wanted to be a writer as a teen... so storytelling was my first love. In my late teens, design became an obsession as I realized that I could express myself through the medium. Much later, when I founded Fuseproject in 1999, our slogan became 'design brings stories to life.'

The best decisions you can ever make are the decisions that will guide you to enhance your gifts in order to create a better life for you and others.

If you go to a game nervous, you make a mistake.

My book 'Ali Pasha' tells the true story of a young sailor Henry Friston, who, in the hell-fire of battle, forms an unusual friendship.

I also held several masters running titles.

I'm incredibly proud of 'Hannibal' and the cast - I feel like we're doing really good television.