They're a redefinition of boredom... the most important thing you need to know about an awards show is where is the nearest smoking opportunity.

Whenever you're adapting something that's a 12- or 14-hour read down to something that has to be around two hours, there's going to be some cuts.

I remember 'Battlestar Galactica' shot at the college that my dad taught at. I remember trying on a Cylon helmet. I think I was 6 or 7 years old.

In a way, artists are shamans, facilitators who take what's there, channel it through themselves, then put it out there for people to appreciate.

I had wanted to make a film about World War II for some time, but I didn't really want to do something that was set in the trenches, so to speak.

'Girls' is a huge show, as far as buzz, and magazine covers, and getting a ton of copy, and awards. And yet I don't think the viewership is huge.

You go through a process of refinement and getting rid of the excesses of your early youth in terms of your excitement about what theatre can do.

Sometimes my scripts get so dissolved, and they're so different from when I wrote them originally, that I find it hard to find what I wrote in it.

The point at which society moves towards our views is a point where we are significantly closer to the vegan world that we are all working toward.

I think we should focus more, rather than less, on mobilising the middle classes. They often have a bit of time and money to contribute to change.

That's my policy - to be positive, to just hope that something will happen. If you start with all your fears, your receptivity is for the negative.

I am trying to be as impartial as possible. As you can tell from the trailers for Mad Men, I am a person who believes that you should know nothing.

All the things that live within you find their place, in character and story, once you tap into that other space that is the creative writing space.

But I think people see 'Wallace and Gromit' as something akin to an elderly couple. These two know each other so well. Nothing can split them apart.

Nicolas Cage, I would love to work with him again. He's just a fearless madman. He'll go anywhere you want to go. He would not say 'no' to anything.

I always considered Ray Harryhausen's work so fine that it was way out of my league: in terms of realism and naturalism, in terms of animal movement.

No matter how far they rise, women never stop being the caregiver. At the end of the day, women bear the emotional responsibility for their families.

As much as I like Michael Moore - and I'm on the same political side as him - I think his documentaries are really a batch of manipulations and lies.

Whenever you make a movie, when it's done, as a filmmaker, you never sit there and say, 'Boy, I really got that right.' It's, 'Where did I screw up?'

For me, there is a basic recognition of horror as the most open doorway where the intersection of philosophical and religious ideas can come tighter.

There are two separate scripts for 'Mockingjay' parts one and two. It's definitely one story, but there are two totally distinct and separate scripts.

I want to experience a performance on all levels - I want goose bumps and I want to leave the movie or play arguing about something that's unresolved.

Acting represents all that human beings experience, and if you want it to be 'nice,' you will never be a serious communicator of the human experience.

The common denominator of the great women leaders in the world - Indira Gandhi, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir - is that they're dramatically nonsexual.

He may not have been a good actor, and I personally don't think he was a good president, but I'll tell you this: Ronald Reagan was a helluva character.

I loved going to the movies, especially when I was a teenager in the seventies. How couldn't you in what was perhaps the greatest era of auteur cinema?

Kurosawa is my hero, and I've taught courses on his films, and I love what he does, and 'Rashomon' is, I think, his second greatest film after 'Ikiru.'

There's no way you can shoot low-budget stuff on lots of locations. It's just a practicality thing because every time you move, it costs time and money.

My directing is really weird. Everything is based on whether it's working or not. I don't try to fix something if it's not working, I'll just change it.

It was one of those great miracles of history that they managed to smuggle an Enigma machines out to Britain just before they were invaded by the Nazis.

My first job was with 'Dawson's Creek' where everybody looked good and they spoke better than you. It was kind of a wish fulfillment, fantasy-type show.

I grew up with an infestation of politics. I'm just nuts about it. It's our form of gladiators in the arena, only they are not in quite as good a shape.

Fundamentalism is rooted in fear, and it's another reason I'm interested in the horror genre, because I know the fear that fundamentalism is built upon.

I guess a lot of things I make are relationship movies. Maybe all movies are relationship movies, because they're all about how we relate to each other.

It's kind of the filmmaker's job to use visual, cinematic language in a way possible to tell a story that reaches and touches as many people as possible.

The thing with 'The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo' is that is it's like an Agatha Christie plot, and an investigating journalist is also a classic character.

There's no need to make any film. The word 'need' is pretty strong. But if there's a purpose behind making the film, there can be a justification for it.

While the Tamils were inventing cabs and leather jackets, we Greeks were busy inventing philosophy. But I guess everybody needs cabs and leather jackets.

I think the way Win Butler writes, I really identify with it. He writes very emotionally and very cinematically, and I just connect with his sensibility.

In many ways, shooting my first feature was more difficult than I had thought it would be, but it was still the most rewarding experience I have ever had.

You can repeat things because it's on a set and there are actors. But if it's a great moment and you don't capture it, it's rare to get that moment again.

I just really feel so grateful to Sundance because I've always been an artist and I've never been able to make a living at being an artist until Sundance.

I think people were a little premature in writing off violent movies. They're going to continue being made, and audiences will continue going to see them.

I remember when MySpace came out. It did do something pretty incredible - which was unite people around the world with common interests and common tastes.

I've done the thing where I stop being communicative, and I've been on the other side where the other person isn't communicating, and I become frustrated.

When I was a teenager, my dad watched my films and told me I could go to art college and study animation. He made me see that I could do this for a living.

With some CGI, I think the brain slightly perceives that things aren't real. There's no gravity, the light's not quite real, the shadows aren't quite real.

I think religion is as flawed an enterprise as any other human endeavor, but the interests and ambitions of religion are the right interests and ambitions.

I love doing features, but it's a very different ballgame. Sometimes I yearn for short films again, working with a small team, getting my hands on the clay.

What I lack in technique, I think I make up more for in intuition. I think intuition is underrated and so important in the work that one does in one's life.

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