No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive.

You can defeat fear through humor, through pain, through honesty, bravery, intuition, and through love in the truest sense.

We only have two hours to change people's lives.

When I started making films, I wanted to make Frank Capra pictures. But I`ve never been able to make anything but these crazy, tough pictures. You are what you are.

There's a difference between ad-libbing and improvising. And there's a difference between not knowing what to do and just saying something. Or making choices as an actor. As a writer also, as a person who's making a film, as a cameraman, everything is a choice. And it seems to me I don't really have to direct anyone or write down that somebody's getting drunk; all I have to do is say that there's a bottle there and put a bottle there and then they're going to get drunk.

Films today show only a dream world and have lost touch with the way people really are... In this country, people die at 21. They die emotionally at 21, maybe younger... My responsibility as an artist is to help people get past 21... The films are a roadmap through emotional and intellectual terrain that provides a solution on how to save pain.

The greatest location in the world is the human face.