As a writer, you have control of the words you put on the page. But once that manuscript leaves your hand, you give control to the reader. As a director, you are limited by everything: weather, budget, and egos.

The director is a bit analogous to the conductor of a symphony orchestra. It's a collaborative adventure.

I was always a filmmaker before I was anything else. If I was always anything, I was a storyteller, and it never really made much of a difference to me what medium I worked in.

Schools and libraries are the twin cornerstones of a civilized society. Libraries are only good if people use them, like books only exist when someone reads them.

Art doesn't just happen by accident. It is about pulling out new tricks and trying new things.

A screenplay is not a finished product; a novel is. A screenplay is a blueprint for something - for a building that will most likely never be built.

As a writer, you have control of the words you put on the page. But once that manuscript leaves your hand, you give control to the reader. As a director, you are limited by everything: weather, budget, and egos.

Actors will change their face, will change their hair, will change their voice, will disappear into the role. A movie star doesn't disappear.

An actor is someone who pretends to be somebody else. A movie star is somebody who pretends that somebody else is them.

The first thing that put me on the map was my Sherlock Holmes novel.

There are moments in one's life where you look back and you say, 'Well, I wish I had done this differently.'

I also do not like the idea of soft money, these issue ads - people don't know where the money is coming from, millions and millions of dollars outside of the control of a candidate - there's no accountability.

George Pal had total control, and he was there on the set every day. You never met a more charming man in your entire lifetime - what a lovely gentleman.

This means that to entrust to science - or to deliberate control according to scientific principles - more than scientific method can achieve may have deplorable effects.

In a theater, the part is mine and I can control it as I want to. In the movies, I don't have direct contact, and I am fighting technical machinery.

Plan Colombia was supposed to reduce Colombia's cultivation and distribution of drugs by 50 percent, but 6 years and $4.7 billion later, the drug control results are meager at best.

Control of vibrato helps your musical expression.

Is anarchism desirable? Well, who does not seek freedom? What man, unless willing to declare himself in bondage, would care to call any control agreeable? Think about it!

The transfer is a monumental occasion as the Iraqi people take control of their government and their future and forge ahead with creating a society governed by the tenets of life, liberty and freedom.

Let's say there are 500 sons and daughters like you in each state. Then we could control the government.

Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talks of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile.

This is an album of songs that I've always loved, tunes that I heard. For the first time in 53 years of recording, I really had control over an entire album, start to finish.

I love making people laugh. It's an addiction and it's probably dysfunctional, but I am addicted to it and there's no greater pleasure for me than sitting in a theater and feeling a lot of people losing control of themselves.

It's frustrating not to have more control over your material.

This is the law of God by which He makes His way known to man and is paramount to all human control.

I'm very excited to see where the characters and their relationships go. But in the end, it really boils down to the people who have more power than me, who control the money.

Anger is a momentary madness, so control your passion or it will control you.

But in a broader sense, when I have more control, I want to expose people to new ideas.

My definition of success is control.

Even Hitchcock liked to think of himself as a puppeteer who was manipulating the strings of his audience and making them jump. He liked to think he had that kind of control.

For me concrete poetry was a particular way of using language which came out of a particular feeling, and I don't have control over whether this feeling is in me or not.

My power is the ability to control water molecules and form them into ice.

Professional sports are something they can't control.

Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.

Only one thing is certain: if pot is legalized, it won't be for our benefit but for the authorities. To have it legalized will also be to lose control of it.

And if thought and emotion can persist in this way so long after the brain that sent them forth has crumpled into dust, how vitally important it must be to control their very birth in the heart, and guard them with the keenest possible restraint.

I smuggled the camera, it was no problem to smuggle the camera there. And I took 60 photos, two films, during the time when there was no one in the control room, in the building.

We can't control what the ratings will be. It's like, if you're going to go skiing, do you hope you'll have a good day of skiing? Yes. Do you hope you won't break your leg? Yes.

I am trying to send directions out and keep control of state government for the final month.

It's more fun if you can control things like lighting and make special effects in the darkroom.

What is the first thing we did when we took control of Iraq? Protect the oil fields. Remember the administration quote about how the oil would pay for the war.

For the past several years, the Meth Caucus has worked to engage the Office of National Drug Control Policy on this issue. We have tried to get their attention that meth requires a strong, comprehensive Federal policy.

We have an open society. No one will come and take me away for saying what I am saying. But they don't have to, if they can control how many people hear it. And that's how they do it.

Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

Although most of us realize what we control and do not control, we live as though we do not really know, and in some cases we spend years focusing on things we cannot control.

Be yourself, take control of your life.

The ego constantly competes with the spirit for control over your inner voice.

The thing is, if you control the Senate meetings, you control the gavel. And the gavel is a very important instrument... an instrument of power. An instrument that establishes the agenda.

You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.