Any good movie is filled with secrets.

I love to take actors to a place where they open a vein. That’s the job. The key is that I make it safe for them to open the vein.

The only safe thing is to take a chance. Play safe and you are dead. Taking risks is the essence of good work, and the difference between safe and bold can only be defined by yourself since no one else knows for what you are hoping when you embark on anything.

In making movies, time is so short-because it is so expensive-that we tend to neglect the place from which the best ideas come, namely that part of ourselves that dreams. The unconscious is our best collaborator.

I came to love silence, because it's so rare, and it's now my favorite aural condition.

That seems to me the greatest American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.

The unconscious is our best collaborator.