I allow a lot of room for improvisation and funny stuff. I always feel planned.

It is really cool to have created a movie that has turned out to become the biggest movie of the year.

It's... a hard thing for a director, to think you came up with a shot, something from your mind, and someone died while doing it. It's the worst thing you'll ever have to live with. It was very hard for me to get back on the horse again.

I love doing big movies. It's awesome! You have all these toys. The thing I like about this movie is, like they always say, directors have the biggest train sets! Don't tell anyone, but I'd do this for free.

We don't make movies for critics. I've done four movies; there's millions upon millions upon millions of people who've paid to see them. Somebody likes them. My greatest joy is to sit anonymously in a dark theater and watch it with an audience, a paying audience.

What I look for in a script is something that challenges me, something that breaks new ground, something that allows me to flex my director muscle. You have got to think fast in this business, you've got to keep reinventing yourself to stay on top.

The press don't like to say nice things because nice is boring. It's much better to label me the devil. What we do is not brain surgery. We are entertainers, plain and simple, and we're responsible to bring that money back, to make a profit.

I allow a lot of room for improvisation and funny stuff. I always feel planned.

Everybody knows about Pearl Harbor. The thing that really fascinated me is that through this tragedy there was this amazing American heroism.

I go out there to win. People don't care if you die in this business. The only way I get back is with success.

Fast cars are my only vice.

I'm at that point in my life where I definitely want to get married soon. I've got my dogs as surrogates, but I'm ready for kids.

For me, the great joy is to watch an audience watching what I've made. To hear not a peep from the audience at the right moment, and then to hear the laughs and the cheers.

Maybe I have just a younger voice than many other directors.

A lot of directors don't want the pressure of a movie the size of Pearl Harbor. But I love it. I thrive on it.

I can be very reserved about things. My business side isn't shy. I can be like a general. But I've got a shy side. I'm also a lot deeper than people think, and a lot more sensitive. But I don't let people in too much.'

Do you know what directors go through? It's just hell. Like, why do I work so hard - to think I'm only going to see this movie five times and then never see it again 'cause I'm so sick of it? What is it worth, honestly?

It's great that I get accused of not being politically correct. People need to take themselves less seriously. This world is so screwed up as it is, we've all got to relax a bit more.

And a lot of the artists and people that we hired were fans of Transformers growing up, so having so many fans working on my crew really kept me on point.

Directing is not a job. It's more like a career. Which is great!

I look at directing as a sporting event. It's a race, a marathon. It's great when it clicks, which is why I push my crews so hard so we can excel.

I make movies for teenage boys. Oh dear, what a crime.

I make movies that audiences like, that I'd want to see. That's all.

I'm done with effects movies for now. When you do a movie like 'Transformers', it can feel like you're doing three movies at once - which is tiring.

I'm one of the few directors that actually shoots a lot in camera.

Nobody in the world knew about Megan Fox until I found her and put her in 'Transformers.' I like to think that I've had some luck in building actors' careers with my films.

There are things that I invented - the creaky geriatric robot that is always grumpy, for example, or the little wheelie guy, he's not in the Hasbro lore. But kids love that stuff - this little guy as a pet on a chain. They gravitate towards it.

It's funny, 'cause it seems like just yesterday that I was the youngest player just starting out. But now there are young players all over the league, and they'll ask me questions about playing overseas or finding an agent.

When Frank the Pug is singing I Will Survive, the only reason it's funny is that Will is in that shot trying not to get angry. A shot of a dog singing I Will Survive on its own will not get a laugh.

I sometimes lie awake at night trying to think of something funny that Richard Nixon said.

Robert Altman's Nashville is my all-time favorite film because it covers all the bases - it's original, moving, and has something to say, but also funny and incredibly entertaining.

You amaze me. You're 229 years old and that's what you think is funny.

You have to understand the tone of the movie, because if it's supposed to be funny, it can be funny violent like the Home Alone stuff, but you have to really understand the tone of what you're doing and make the action work for that and for the character.

It is funny that men who are supposed to be scientific cannot get themselves to realise the basic principle of physics, that action and reaction are equal and opposite, that when you persecute people you always rouse them to be strong and stronger.

Half of the great comedians I've had in my shows and that I paid a lot of money to and who made my customers shriek were not only not funny to me, but I couldn't understand why they were funny to anybody.

There's a constant flow of child actors. It's kind of funny to watch the new crew come through. I think, You poor little things. You're going to have to struggle for a long time.

For sheer sexiness, a man must be beautiful. Funny. yes. Clever, no.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

Books are funny little portable pieces of thought.

I had an idea of what I thought was funny. It's kind of based on how I am.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.

When we criticize in Iran the actions of the government, the fundamentalists say that we and the Bush Administration are in the same camp. The funny thing is that human rights activists and Mr. Bush can never be situated in the same group.

So to me, Texas Hold 'em puts me to sleep. At least when you play stud, you can be funny as you deal. Somebody some day is going to come up with a Stud show that's going to work.

Great, big, serious novels always get awards. If it's a battle between a great, big, serious novel and a funny novel, the funny novel is doomed.

Baldwin is sort of getting to be a bit funny. I don't know what happened, but a few years ago they suddenly went bankrupt and Gibson bought the whole outfit. Since then they haven't seemed to be doing an awfully good job of providing pianos.

It's funny how sometimes how the public some people think I was born like this. That I maybe I sleep and I do big muscle, but its a lot of work to look like this and to be in this kind of condition.

I think back to some of the things Harry said and some of the things I said trying to be funny. If I said them now, it would be on the front page of every newspaper in the country.

Shirley MacLaine said, You're so funny, then gave me a hug. Everything went white. I couldn't hear, I couldn't see. I thought I was going to pass out.

I think movies glamorize violence, in the sense that they make it in a way that it's either cool or funny.