An essential element of any art is risk. If you don't take a risk then how are you going to make something really beautiful, that hasn't been seen before?
I think cinema, movies, and magic have always been closely associated. The very earliest people who made film were magicians.
There's nothing creative about living within your means.
My talent is that I just try and try and try and try again and little by little it comes to something.
Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.
You don't have to specialize - do everything that you love and then, at some time, the future will come together for you in some form.
I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing.
You have to really be courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise you'll just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable will be lost.
Work on nothing less than epic scale
Death is what makes life an event.
Although knowledge of structure is helpful, real creativity comes from leaps of faith in which you jump to something illogical. But those leaps form the memorable moments in movies and plays.
When you make a film it is like asking yourself a question. When it is finished, you know the answer. Ultimately with all of cinema, we are just trying to learn about ourselves. I have always used the opportunity to make a film to learn more about myself, which I am still doing.
Usually, the stuff that's your best idea or work is going to be attacked the most.
Always make your work be personal. And, you never have to lie... There is something we know that's connected with beauty and truth. There is something ancient. We know that art is about beauty, and therefore it has to be about truth.
Drinking wine is just a part of life, like eating food.
Sound is your friend because sound is much cheaper than picture, but it has equal effect on the audience - in some ways, perhaps more effect because it does it in a very indirect way.
Time is the lens through which dreams are captured.
The whole reason one wants to do lower budget films is because the lower the budget, the bigger the ideas, the bigger the themes, the more interesting the art.
I think it's better to be overly ambitious and fail than to be underambitious and succeed in a mundane way. I have been very fortunate. I failed upward in my life!
It takes no imagination to live within your means.
The things you get fired for when you’re young are the same things that you get lifetime achievement awards for when you’re old.
One thing that I'm sure of is the real pleasure of life - it's not being known, it's not having your own jet plane, it's not having a mansion the pleasure is to learn something
If the movie works, nobody notices the mistakes... If the movie doesn't work, the only thing people notice are mistakes.
I remember in The Conversation, they brought all these coats to me, and they said: Do you want him to look like a detective, Humphrey Bogart? Do you want him to look like a blah blah blah. I didn't know, and said the theme is 'privacy' and chose the plastic coat you could see through. So knowing the theme helps you make a decision when you're not sure which way to go.
Wine is so much more than a beverage. It's a romance, a story, a drama-all of those things that are basically putting on a show.
