If you're not operating on an instinctive level, you're not an artist.... Reason over emotion is bullshit, absolute bullshit... We suffocate ourselves in rules. I find fantasy liberating.

What happens to me is that I am first and foremost a film geek.

For any actor to have Oliver Stone call him or her up… It’s a compliment. He expects you to be on your toes. If you’re not, he pokes at you until you react. He’s very provocative, creatively. It started like a lot of hard work, but it ended up a lot of fun.

Frankfurt, discussing a stuntman: He missed being killed in that shot be literally half an inch.

for in the absence of God he had found Man. Man killing man, man helping man, both of them anonymous: the scourge and the blessing.

I think there are movies that are so gigantic that you need a second unit

It's the difference between a parable and a pamphlet. A parable discusses things that are relevant in the past, the future, and the present - regardless of the outcome in the present. A pamphlet, on the other hand, is completely concerned with affecting an outcome in the present, the most immediate present.