Perfume is pretty good because nobody has to hold the product by their face or use it.

You can’t take everything on. That’s why when people ask how does this film fit into my oeuvre. I say 'I don’t know. I don’t think in those terms’. If I did, I might become incapacitated by fear . . . How do you eat a whale? One bite at a time. How do you shoot a 150-day movie? You shoot it one day at a time.

Take ownership of every decision you make because you will be hold responsible for the film, whether good or bad.

You know, I don't think I've ever listened to someone's commentary. Ever.

I don't think that digital technology will ever take away the humanity of storytelling, because storytelling is entirely, in and of itself, a wholly human concern.

What you learn from that first, and I don't call it 'trial by fire,' I call it 'baptism by fire,' is that you are going to have to take all of the responsibility, because basically when it gets right down to it, you are going to get all of the blame, so you might as well have made all of the decisions that led to people either liking it or disliking it. There's nothing worse than hearing somebody say 'Oh, you made that movie? I thought that movie sucked,' and you have to agree with them, you know?

People go to the movies to see things they haven’t seen before. Call me a radical.