He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.
You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.
Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else’s.
Make subtlety obvious.
If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
An audience is never wrong. An individual member of it may be an imbecile, but a thousand imbeciles together in the dark – that is critical genius.
You’re as good as the best thing you’ve ever done.
Eighty percent of a picture is writing, the other twenty percent is the execution, such as having the camera on the right spot and being able to afford to have good actors in all parts.
If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.
If there’s anything I hate more than not being taken seriously, it’s being taken too seriously.
The best director is the one you don’t see.
The only pictures worth making are the ones that are playing with fire.
I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.
A director must be a policeman, a midwife, a psychoanalyst, a sycophant and a bastard.
God save me from myself.
I just always think, ‘Do I like it?’ And if I like it, maybe other people will come and like it too.
My English is a mixture between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Archbishop Tutu.
Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.
If you don’t like what you’re doing, it’s unlikely anyone else will either, so be sure you are happy with your own work first.