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

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.

Roosevelt's magic lay in one facet of his personality: He knew how to take the risk. No other man in public life I knew could so readily take the challenge of the new.

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.

If it came to saving the life of one priest or sacrificing the life of an entire congregation, the church would save the life of the priest. Which is backwards, of course.

Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.

All literary men are Red Sox fans - to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.

At the end, the realization is that she had to get to a place in her life where she could drop her guard and make peace with the fact that whether she had a small amount of time, that she had to kind of live it completely through, instead of living by the rules.

You have choices to make about what you do with the rest of your life.

From the standpoint of observation, then, we must regard it as a highly probable hypothesis that the beginnings of the mental life date from as far back as the beginnings of life at large.

I want to have babies one day but not right now. When I do it I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.

Any judge who allows an adulterer with a live-in girlfriend to terminate the life of his wife should be impeached.

I can assure you, public service is a stimulating, proud and lively enterprise. It is not just a way of life, it is a way to live fully.

The work which is manipulated looks a little boring to me. I think life is pretty strange anyway. It is wooo, wooo, wooo!

With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.

This isn't life in the fast lane, it's life in the oncoming traffic.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

Sometimes life's so much cooler when you just don't know any better and all the painful lessons have not hammered your head open yet.