Music has always been an important thing to me in my life and understand I've worked in the music business.

I really believe you can predict when someone has a great attitude, a real well of talent.

I feel very comfortable shooting music, and I think you can see that.

The SAS is the most elite of the special forces in the world. They are not people who go out and advertise; they keep it inside. They don't want anybody to know about them.

You'd be surprised how many movie stars still care about the work.

It's very clearly stated in the film: You make your own choices, and what you're always fighting is ego.

I make films about working class people.

But, unfortunately, sometimes that affirmation creates a sense that you deserve special treatment and recognition in areas where you're not so talented.

It isn't glamorous until after the film is finished, and you are at the premiere and getting your picture on the cover of magazines.

I also know what looks good before the camera, how to move the camera, and how to get a story on the screen.

We all get paid very, very well, and we have responsibilities.

If people are worried about the size of their trailers, I kind of say their priorities are off.

I try to get the best performance an actor can give.

An actor has to embody a role.

This devil loves mankind because men are going to always make the choice that will send him into ascendancy. He's been winning the game for a long time.

Ray Charles, in his own way, it's like at the beginning, Ray Charles changed American music, not once but twice.

And it's a question of how far we're willing to go in order to let the ego shine, in order to let that beacon penetrate not only the local scene but the world.

But a writer's contribution is literary and a film is not literary. When you take that stuff off the page, and cast the people who are going to fit into those roles, that's what being a director is.

It's much easier to work with an unknown.

Russell Crowe is very difficult, but it's worth it. He's the real thing. I can tell you this. Russell Crowe was just as difficult before he was an international star as he was afterwards.

Well I don't think I've scored my life exclusively to Ray Charles.

The whole concept of the devil is a metaphor on one level.

It was the era of Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson; they all had a certain look.

Look at Walter Huston in The Devil and Daniel Webster: It's an incredible performance.

Show business is one of those things that people can use to get themselves out of the lower rung of society.

My creative partner is a writer, and he's got an executive producing credit on this film. We've made three films together and I would never underestimate the impact of a writer.

When I finish a film, I put it away and I never look at it again.

Music has always been an important thing to me in my life and understand I've worked in the music business.

But the process of making a film is not glamorous. Certainly not my films.

Because when you have millions of people with this kind of need for gratification, and the culture is saying that it's possible for everyone to satisfy all of their needs and desires all of the time, there are obviously going to be clashes - clashes of ego.

The director's job should give you a sense of music without drawing attention to itself.

I'm not in front of the camera, they are. I encourage them; I build up as much of their confidence and ego as possible. They've got to take control; I can't act it out.

Natural resources are so vast that no single individual or business is going to protect them; they don't have an incentive to.

The bronze powder business, however, no longer required my personal attention, and was well managed by those I had chosen as the guardians of a secret, which was long and honourably kept.

I have done things politically, and I've been running a business at the same time, but I sort of joke that to some extent I do more than most legislators have done in their whole careers, and I've been doing it as a part-time job.

Howard Hughes himself was a regular at the restaurant, and in a way it became his headquarters, too. Howard had recently relocated to Las Vegas, so when he wanted to do business in Los Angeles, he went into the back of our restaurant to use the telephone.

Prosperous farmers mean more employment, more prosperity for the workers and the business men of every industrial area in the whole country.

My parents were amazing people who had no business being together - and they knew it.

We mean by "politics" the people's business - the most important business there is.

Slovakia's joining the OECD in 1999 is totally dependent on meeting economic reforms required such as transparency and legislation that permits fair and open conduct of trade and business.

The way the business things work in Russia is you have to meet people, you have to go through a certain amount of etiquette and business things are done just simply by a shake of the hand and whether they like you or not.

I make no claim to being a business genius. You can make so much money in this business that it loses its value.

It costs a great deal of money to do a musical, and the more money involved, the more big business influences the artform.

It's a very hard and competitive business in which you have to fight every day in order to impose yourself.

I know the history of the record business so well because I followed Billie Holiday into the record studios. It was so primitive compared to the sophisticated business today.

Chicago kept industry, attracted new business, became the center for convention trade and transportation.

I have been, and will go on, fighting that damnable, dirty, rotten business with all the power at my command.

All business success rests on something labeled a sale, which at least momentarily weds company and customer.

I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.