I realized early on that success was tied to not giving up.

The capacity to create [visual] effects in the computer has made the job easier, but it has also introduced the complexity that you can with a few more keystrokes generate such a busy canvas that the eye doesn't know where to go. You lose human scale on an event and you're just wowed by the kinetics and the visualization. But, often in those cases I feel you lose touch with the human characters and what it is that they would feel and how they might feel, and that's still the most important part.

There is no child left within me, none whatsoever.

I've always wanted to be bald. I mean it, completely bald. Wouldn't it be great to be bald in the rain?

The thing I always guard against when I'm talking to people I'm working with about a script is that there's a thing I don't like and it's called "talk story." It's when you're talking about the story; the characters are tasked with talking about the story instead of allowing the audience to experience the story.

If you're going to define me properly, you must think in terms of my failures as well as my successes.

What's important is to be able to see yourself, I think, as having commonality with other people and not determine, because of your good luck, that everybody is less significant, less interesting, less important than you are.