I sit there pouring out my woes year after year, coming up with one enormity after another about my mother and the way she let me down; but it doesn't make me any the less fearful.

Far be it from me to force anyone into either chess or dressage, but if you choose to do so yourself, in my opinion there is only one way: follow the rules.

I had an almost fetishistic attraction to film technology.

I sit there pouring out my woes year after year, coming up with one enormity after another about my mother and the way she let me down; but it doesn't make me any the less fearful.

I always do something that I've never done before.

You could say that when you introduce humour to your work, you also step back a little from it. You create a distance.

I'm happy that I'm alive. I feel like someone coming back from Vietnam, you know; I'm sure that later on I'll start killing people in a square somewhere, but right now, I just feel happy to be alive.

If I made a musical in the beginning of my career, it would have been crane shots and tracking shots and people coming out of cakes and whatever, but these techniques are something that I've left behind me.

Only a fool does not fear actors, but you can't beat them, and if you can't beat them, join them, as they say. As I've got older I've become very interested in that part of the work.

I grew up in a culturally radical home, where strong emotions were forbidden.

That's the great thing about entering a convent: There are things that you simply can't do, so you don't have to worry about them.

If one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart.

I think it's important that we all try to give something to this medium, instead of just thinking about what is the most efficient way of telling a story or making an audience stay in a cinema.

When I was younger, I was fascinated by David Bowie, for example. he had created an entire myth around himself. It was as important as his music.

It's always been a lie that it's difficult to make films.

I'm having a vacation, and it's so beautiful, and maybe I'll never get another film idea in my life.

Actors need bricks to play with, and in fact we rejected all the improvised fragments we had made without a plan. Improvisation without a plan is like tennis without tennis balls.

When I was in film school, it was said that all good films were characterised by some form of humour.

More than anything, there are more images in evil. Evil is based far more on the visual, whereas good has no good images at all.

Basically, I'm afraid of everything in life, except filmmaking.

I am not very tough with raising my children, but you can argue that to be more tough will help your children.

I know that I cannot be with a person for three hours without saying at least ten things that would kill me.

I would say that I am a poor Christian; I'm not a believer. It was this idea very early in my life that life on Earth, nature or man could not be a creation of a merciful God.

If you want to provoke, you should provoke someone who is stronger than you, otherwise you are misusing your power.

My films are about ideals that clash with the world. Every time it's a man in the lead, they have forgotten about the ideals. And every time it's a woman in the lead, they take the ideals all the way.

Political correctness kills discussion.

When I show a film at a festival, I am showing myself. Everything is at stake for me.

You know, I really do have some morals. I do actually care about people. And I do have a political standpoint.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

My mother keeps things in perspective for me. She makes me realize that the acting I do and love is no more important than what one of my brothers does-he works in a shoe repair shop. If my career ever tapers off, I'll go to college.

Bambi has a profound effect on children because it's about losing your mother.

For those whose wit becomes the mother of villainy, those it educates to be evil in all things.

I never turned down a mother role.

I'd like to one day play Amanda, the mother, in The Glass Menagerie.

My mother is Irish, my father is black and Venezuelan, and me - I'm tan, I guess.

I loved my mother, she's a good girl.

A man is free to go up as high as he can reach up to; but I, with all my style and pep, can't get a man my equal because a girl is always judged by her mother.

Just as a mother finds pleasure in taking her little child on her lap, there to feed and caress him, in like manner our loving God shows His fondness for His beloved souls who have given themselves entirely to Him and have placed all their hope in His goodness.

Well ironically my last three roles have all been a mother. One was a Canadian film where the baby was taken away because she is a drug addict, in Irish Jam I play a mother to a four year old. I think in the future I'll be able to handle the role with a lot more depth.

Most turkeys taste better the day after, my mother's tasted better the day before.

During my grief, I realised there was nothing I could do for my mother, but I did have a child.

That's so different in Hong Kong when I'm using my own mother language, I can treat the line in one thousand different ways, with many different reactions.

I am scared of becoming a mother.

My mother liked Jim Reeves. I hated his records. He was unbearable.

The eyebrow pencil and false eyelashes were essential; my mother didn't feel dressed without them.

When I was 13 I asked my mother if it was possible for this to end - I'd had enough of it. And that was right about the time that we got a call for "The Exorcist" interview.

Middle age is the awkward period when Father Time starts catching up with Mother Nature.

I think it's time to do clean-up for a generation. I believe this is one of the movies that hits home for all colors and all races. Everybody I talk to, black or white, suburban, rich or poor, can relate to rejection, can relate to not having a father or a mother.

Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.