If you try to make interesting films, you're going to be disappointed most of the time. I choose just not to look at it that way.

I had a huge advantage with Edward Norton because he's directed a movie before, so one thing he appreciates is how hard my job is, he's very sensitive to that. We actually ended up finishing "Leaves of Grass" a day early.

Popularity is the slutty little cousin of prestige, my friend.

See, I don't get the sense that you need to direct at all. Sometimes I get the opposite sensation from you, that you're like, "I really should go do something else." But then you are drawn back in by a particular story, like a hangnail in the brain.

A lot of why I do something is just the novelty of the experience.

You know when somebody really knows what they're drawing from and you can feel it when you see the movie.

My greatest hope is that we transcend the most fearful thing, which is that we are rapidly degrading the ecological systems on this planet that support everything we are doing and all life on it.