It took me a long time to realize that you have to have a bit of an interlanguage with actors. You have to give them something that they can act with.

I love short trips to New York; to me it is the finest three-day town on earth.

There is a hugely underserved population out there... those who are the least capable of paying pay the highest.

With 'Avatar,' I thought, Forget all these chick flicks and do a classic guys' adventure movie, something in the Edgar Rice Burroughs mold, like John Carter of Mars - a soldier goes to Mars.

Religions fulfill deep-seated psychological needs for people, and if you don't get it from a specific religious doctrine, you'll get it from the kind of films I like to make. A film like The Terminator is consciously meant to give a sense of empowerment to the individual.

Writing a screenplay, for me, is like juggling. It's like, how many balls can you get in the air at once? All those ideas have to float out there to a certain point, and then they'll crystallize into a pattern.

I've tried not to get sucked into the Hollywood hierarchy system. Personally, I don't like it when people are deferential to me because I'm an established filmmaker. It's a blue-collar sensibility.