To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.

When it came to a lot of these German actors with the English, they just couldn't do it. They couldn't get the poetry out of it. They couldn't own it and make it their own. And then Christoph [Waltz] came in, and I didn't know who Christoph was.

If the film is nominated for awards, and even if it wins them, it doesn't make the movie any better, just as if it's ignored that doesn't make the movie any worse.

If there is something magic about the collaborations I have with actors it's because I put the character first.

I don't feel any 'white guilt,' because I had nothing to do with (slavery) whatsoever. I feel shame for my country that it happened and that's why I feel we need to deal with it.

He musta thought it was white boy day. It ain't white boy day, is it?

I like a much more Japanese style of blood, where it's red and it almost has a paint kind of quality to it. You can put it on metal, and it has this vividness. Because, normally, what they use in Hollywood is this stuff that looks like strawberry pancake syrup or raspberry pancake syrup.