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.

There are men who bloom in chaos. You call them heroes or villains, depending on which side wins the war, but until the battle call they are but normal men who long for action, who lust for the opportunity to throw off the routine of their normal lives like a cocoon and come into their own. They sense a destiny larger than themselves, but only when structures collapse around them do these men become warriors.

Somebody said to me, in a very well-meaning way, at a screening, "We love the movie but it's too violent. If you tone down the violence you could reach a great audience of kids.".

Awareness of insanity does not make one any less insane. Awareness of drowning does not make one any less of a drowning person--it only adds the burden of panic

You live and die two or three times making a movie. First, you write it, and the first pivotal moment comes when you can get it made. The second is in the process of making it, when the movie reveals itself to you, its flaws and its virtues. Then the most unnerving moment is when that movie is then launched into the world. It’s like bringing your kid to the first day at school and somebody points out that it has bowlegs, it is cross-eyed, or it’s gorgeous. You feel very exposed.

I have a sort of a fetish for insects, clockwork, monsters, dark places, and unborn things

I only produce directors and movies that I have a lot in common with.