The older I get the more I realize there's no real good guys or real bad guys, and I'm curious about how the good guys got good and how the bad guys got bad.

I'm at Miramax now, where I've actually been treated like a Prince.

What I think happens today is that a lot of filmmakers look at other films that are retro pieces, like L.A. Confidential, and say, oh, that's period. We didn't want to do the stereotypical stuff.

I tried to stick to my game plan, which was always being aware of what my A story was - the love story between a father and his son, and that son and his daughter.

And then we watched an amazing number of movies from the late '60s and '70s, which is my favorite time, and we studied their camera movements, their stocks, the way they lit stuff, the colors they used.

But my humble opinion is, I'm not quite sure where I stand on the legalization of drugs - though, if tequila is legal, pot should probably be legal.

The older I get the more I realize there's no real good guys or real bad guys, and I'm curious about how the good guys got good and how the bad guys got bad.

You know, I think everything I do cinematically for the rest of my life will probably have some direct route back to Jonathan. But I love him to death. He's like my best friend and my big brother.

I was influenced by European movies, old Fellini, old Kurosawa - any sort of foreign film.

There are a lot of films that are drug dramas, and we didn't want to tell Scarface again.

The thing that's great about those guys at Miramax is the Weinstein brothers. They are the two funniest guys I've ever met in my life.

I felt that as long as we were being honest, and that we didn't bend the truth to accomplish another goal, to be entertaining or to be a happy ending, I was confident that we'd be able to tell the story the way it happened.

That's why I'm really trying to produce my own stuff. This film was so good, because I produced it myself, and developed it, and made it with New Line, which is a smaller studio, so I was in control of a lot of stuff that I wasn't in control of for my other films.

I think, on a larger note, that filmmakers and studios should start to tuck it in a little bit, because films wouldn't have the pressure they have if the word wasn't out about how expensive they were.

A border collie named Orson inspired me to buy a 110-acre farm with four barns and a sheep. That led to a series of books about Bedlam Farm and about dogs, rural life, lambing and herding sheep.

I confess I'm a big fan of Taylor Swift.

I have Native American blood. I have African blood. I have European blood.

It is impossible for any woman to love her children twenty-four hours a day.

Stay humble, do your best, and the rest will follow.

The silent film has a lot of meanings. The first part of the film is comic. It represents the burlesque feel of those silent films. But I think that the second part of the film is full of tenderness and emotion.

Once you're a football player, you're a football player for life. You always think of yourself in terms of that. We all do. It's hard to get rid of when you can't play anymore.

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.

You must look into people as well as at them.

The perfect gadget would somehow allow me to fly. Isn't that what everybody wants? It would also cook a damn good microwave pizza. So while in flight you had something to eat - an in-flight meal. Where would I go? Well, nowadays, it would probably just take me to work a lot quicker.

There's nothing I like better than talking to kids, just sharing the music with them. To relate to them, you need to play songs they're familiar with.

Excitement is the more practical synonym for happiness, and it is precisely what you should strive to chase. It is the cure-all.

I'm not opposed to adoption. It's not in my immediate future because I'm on the move a lot and if I were going to be father I would like to be more grounded.

You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play.

There may be some changes in building codes, but I don't see any stylistic departure that you'll be able to attribute to Sept. 11.

I think literature can make familiar the unfamiliar, and the unfamiliar is very much about the dispossessed, and so the value of literature seems to me to go into the stories that not everybody wants to tell.

Human dignity is the same for all human beings when I trample on the dignity of another I am trampling on my own.

Change is not a threat, it's an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.

My greatest achievement is being able to write records that are real snapshots of what's going on in my life. I won't repeat myself for the sake of commerce, or to please other people.

I don't want to say that our expectations of love are too high; it's just that if we're to meet them, we have to become a little more self-aware.

Get in the race car do what I do then go home. We don't have freedom to do anything anymore.

For me, being in front of a camera is a matter of practicing and refining your art. I think, if you're telling a story worth telling, it's worth investing the time into developing.

People should have literary and cultural taste and should not bomb hotels.

I enjoy playing clubs. I still enjoy the closeness of the nightclub venue. However, after a certain period of time and after playing around some of the clubs in New YorkI felt that jazz should be presented in a more prestigious atmosphere.