Remembering is painful, it's difficult, but it can be inspiring and it can give wisdom.

Remembering is painful, it's difficult, but it can be inspiring and it can give wisdom.

The people who went on that airplane were unexceptional.

In the end, it's acting, it's not real. But every director will tell you that you have to create conditions that create tension, because tension is what makes drama feel real.

Why are people saying it's too soon? Like the people on that flight, we need to agree about what to do about terrorism. And I think we need to have that conversation now.

Acting is many things, and one is an exercise of will. In any given scene, you're trying to find where the drama and conflict is and then deploy the actors to play at that point of conflict with precision, control, and complete will.

Action is only really compelling when it reveals character - character revealed through action, and not action for its own sake.

All directors make films in individual ways. But the classical kind of view of filmmaking is that you have a script, and it's very linear. There's a script, then you're going to shoot the script ,and then you cut that, and then that's the end of the film. And that's never really been how I've seen it.

Directing is all tied up with childhood loneliness. It's such an odd thing to end up doing.

I always tell young film-makers, 'Find the song that only you can sing.' It doesn't just come to you. It's trial and error and disappointment before you find, slowly but surely, the confidence to express your film-making identity.

I don't want to feel what I'm creating on film has an outcome that is preordained. I don't think of the world as a place with a divinity that shapes our end. What you try to do with film is create, as far as you possibly can, an unfolding present - a theatre in which an outcome happens and is tested.

I just don't get on with institutions. I need simple relationships with people who believe in me.

I'd always suspected my face wouldn't fit in drama departments. And it never did!

In my little imperfect way, what I'm trying to do is understand the world. As a filmmaker, you realize as you get older that each film is part of a dialogue you're having with yourself. That started when I was working in documentaries. And in a way, I've never deviated from it.

It's a circus life, the movies. It's a lot of travelling, a lot of antisocial hours; there's a lot of it that's about escaping from life.

It's no good in a scene to have one actor lie down because the scene says it's the other actor's moment. Each actor has to believe that with extra will, the outcome of a scene can be different. An actor can win the scene if he exerts the most powerful will in that moment.

Making a film, every film, is a big gamble, large or small. The more that you do it, the more you're aware of that.

Making movies is both entirely ludicrous and incredibly hard. It's a preposterous way to spend your time. You give up a lot for the privilege of doing it, and one of the things you get are relationships of immense trust that you see forged in situations of immense stress.

My films express me, my sense of rhythm, my sense of impact, my sense of kinetic energy. I like films to move, but I like also clear storytelling and characters, and most of all, I like authentic emotion.

Speaking personally as a filmmaker, I think encoded in Bond are a series of values about Britain, about the world, about masculinity, about power, about the empire that I don't share. Quite the reverse. Whereas in Bourne, I think encoded is much more scepticism. There's an us and a them, and Bourne is an us, whereas Bond is working for them.

Studio people are bright. Empowering. They don't want to have to interfere creatively. That's their horror story, too.

The most important thing as a filmmaker, the hardest journey you'll have, is to find your point of view.

To make a film is eighteen months of your life. It's seven days a week. It's twenty hours a day.

Tom Hanks has built his career playing ordinary men.

Very few people do bad things because they're bad. They generally do bad things because they think they're the right thing to do, but they're misplaced.

What attracts me to Bourne's world is that is a real world, and I think I'm most comfortable there. But I come to a Bourne movie to have fun as a filmmaker, to strut my stuff, and that's part of the fun of franchise filmmaking.

With a franchise movie, it's got to turn the wheels of the industry, and the studio has to have them. So you start with a release date. They say we're going to make a new 'Bourne' film, and it comes out summer of X. Then they start on a script, and invariably, the script is not ready in time.

I think we all have blocks between us and the best version of ourselves, whether it's shyness, insecurity, anxiety, whether it's a physical block, and the story of a person overcoming that block to their best self. It's truly inspiring because I think all of us are engaged in that every day.

But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.

You usually can't tell what's inspiring until you look back on it.

I want to be inspiring to myself, to my kids, my family, and my friends.

I got to work with one of my heroes, Johnny Depp, and to see how he goes about business, which was really inspiring for me at this stage in my career.

It's always a combination of physics and poetry that I find inspiring. It's hard to wrap your head around things like the Hubble scope.

The white spruce forest along the banks is most inspiring, magnificent here. Down the terraced slopes and right to the water's edge on the alluvial soil it stands in ranks.

So it doesn't have to be happy music to be inspiring.

The bottom line is, it's a great script and that's very inspiring and makes you want to overcome whatever technical difficulties you come up against.

I've only had good experiences with actors. Starring next to them and directing them, for the most part they're all inspiring, special people.

Remembering is painful, it's difficult, but it can be inspiring and it can give wisdom.

I know the pressures of being the daughter of a great actress. But it's inspiring. You learn so much that other people don't get to learn until later on. My father being a director, I learnt a real work ethic.

Sofia is so active, and she made The Virgin Suicides, which I thought was great - all these things are inspiring to me, not in terms of creating a particular dress, but just in terms of knowing that there is this type of woman out there.

And as a character, what I found very inspiring about playing Dharma, especially at that time, is that the women on television were more neurotic than they were free. And I thought, this is a rare bird and this is unique on television and I think it's really refreshing.

Some ways of using our thinking are really inspiring. There are people who use their thinking to race cars. People use their thinking to build rockets to the moon. It's all just a use of your thinking.

Time has been transformed, and we have changed; it has advanced and set us in motion; it has unveiled its face, inspiring us with bewilderment and exhilaration.

I really struggle with that feeling of helplessness. That's why I really try to get my blogs, and even myself, to point to the positive and look at all the inspiring things that are happening.

When you first start doing it, being on tour is inspiring, because you've never been anywhere.

In this case they're doctors. But having passion for your work and to take risks in order to better human kind. That's a pretty big theme. It's pretty inspiring.

Books have become our dearest companions, yielding exquisite delights and inspiring lofty aims.

I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring.

Dr. King is so inspiring, so impressive, so moving as a human being.