It's a miracle when something actually turns out well because there are so many ways for it to go wrong.

If Wes Anderson has a very strong cast, he can direct the minutia of that story and still manage to have something that lives and breathes.

This Catholic thing, I think what it does is it makes a place for mystery in a person. And even when the faith goes away, there's that space where you crave something bigger than yourself. For me, that's kind of where art came in, after that.

If you can just see all the children of the world as your own, all the mothers of the world as you are, we can make a huge difference.

Everything's serendipitous and there's no way of knowing who's going to get sick or who's going to get hit by a bus or who's going to fall in love and who's going to get pregnant. All the things that happen, it's up for grabs so it's kind of an exercise in surrender in a way.

Certainly, if more people were smoking instead of drinking, people don’t get mean on weed, don’t beat up their wives on weed, and don’t drive crazy on weed. They just get hungry, don’t go out of the house, or laugh a lot. I think it would make for a much more gentle world.

When you start to develop your powers of empathy and imagination, the whole world opens up to you.