Pick up a camera. Shoot something. No matter how small, no matter how cheesy, no matter whether your friends and your sister star in it. Put your name on it as director. Now you're a director. Everything after that you're just negotiating your budget and your fee.

Don't get seduced by your own stuff; work hard to keep a blank slate state of mind each time you watch your film.

The last I checked, 'Titanic' worldwide has grossed $1.3 billion. Imagine how much more it would have grossed if I had gotten the sky correct.

Your imagination can create a reality

The film industry is about saying 'no' to people, and inherently you cannot take 'no' for an answer.

Climate change is critical to me because I'm a parent; I feel a sense of responsibility to the future. I'm not going to be around to see its worst effects, which are going to be hitting in the 2030s, '40s, '50s, but my kids will.

You can have a strong economy or you can help the environment, but you can't do both at the same time. That's ridiculous. In fact, as a sustainable vision for a healthy economy has to involve changing our energy policy and changing with respect to the natural world. Because we're hitting nature's thresholds, we're hitting nature's limits with respect to water and crop yields and energy use and fossil fuels heating the atmosphere at the same time we're past global peak and running out of that.