If you covet fame, if you covet all the superficial accolades, you're gonna be miserable 'cause you're never going to get enough praise. If you covet contributing something substantive to movies, music, literature, then you won't be unhappy.

Directing is like putting together a collage.

Most of us float with the river and there are a few people who move the river. Robert DeNiro is definitely one of them.

In all of our society, but especially in Hollywood, there is an obsession with perfection that can lead to self-loathing and neurosis and all that kind of stuff.

I'm horrified to admit that I just love Salinger. I was devastated to find out that other people feel the same way.

When you make a movie with Alejandro Amenábar, he very quickly... it was very clear you're kind of operating in his dream universe.

My relationship to reality has been so utterly skewed for so long that I don't even notice it any more. It's just my reality.