Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes from your knees and thighs.

You are confronted with abysses of time that are, in a way, unfathomable. You see a painting in charcoal of raindeer and it was left unfinished and somebody else finished it. But through radio carbon dating we know that the next one completed the painting 5,000 years later. You're just blown away by the notion of passage of time. We have no relationship to that kind of depth of time.

English is a really wonderful language and I urge you all to investigate it

My contacts with the film industry can be described in very simple terms: The industry does not really need me, and I do not really need the industry.

People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder.

Only the poets can hold the country together, and I wanted to hold Germany together.

"Jack Reacher" was easy because the function of the villain was just to spread fear and horror.