This weird pressure that mothers are put under, like this idea that if you can't breastfeed, you're not doing something properly, or if you choose not to.

If we don't participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy. So Obama will rise or fall based not so much on what he does but on what we do to support him.

Capitalism would have never let me be a filmmaker, living in Flint, Michigan with a high school education. I was going to have to make that happen myself.

The point is not to give people a break. The point is to tell all the truth you can bear about them and not despise them, not to be a kumbaya kind of guy.

To me, football is very personal. Even as a kid, I looked at football in dramaturgical terms. It wasn't the score that interested me, it was the struggle.

In Japan, violence isn't as controversial as it is in the West. Pornography is more restricted, but it's not hard to make a crazy, extremely violent film.

I'm not very aware of styles. We never talk about styles before we start shooting, or even during shooting, because I think the film will bring you there.

I definitely feel sorry more people don't get to see my films. They aren't inaccessible, and if people got the chance to see them, I know they'd like them.

Sometimes when people look at the work I've done with my family, they think it's autobiographical. But it really isn't. It's more about the idea of family.

In documentary you sometimes see the tyranny of the linear, but what I've noticed in the last ten years in narrative film is the tyranny of the non-linear.

I think this takes a lot of courage and integrity to find your own voice and way to express not only your story, but the reality you are setting it within.

Everybody's a mad scientist, and life is their lab. We're all trying to experiment to find a way to live, to solve problems, to fend off madness and chaos.

We must plant the sea and herd its animals using the sea as farmers instead of hunters. That is what civilization is all about - farming replacing hunting.

Music films are great, but they can never compete with a live performance. Live music is what it is. It's the whole point. You experience it in the moment.

I don't think that the spoken words solve everything. Sometimes silence delivers truer feelings while the words can distort the meaning in some situations.

I'm a citizen in a democracy. To call me an activist would be redundant. It's not a spectator sport. If we all become non-participants, it no longer works.

Civilisation never dies, it may change, but it is eternal. Where the paddy field is born on the dry river bed of Titash, there begins another civilisation.

We're in an era where you learn about techniques, but you don't experience anything crucial in yourself about a piece of work from an artist that you love.

When I write an original story I write about people I know first-hand and situations I'm familiar with. I don't write stories about the nineteenth century.

I remember when we were making 'They Call It Pro Football,' which was our 'Citizen Kane.' The first line is 'It starts with a whistle and ends with a gun.'

I wanted to make '13 Assassins' in the old manner, to use old techniques and not to rely on modern-day ones such as CGI, or editing that changes the speed.

I felt that all of us working on our remake of '13 Assassins' had to honour the original director, Eiichi Kudo, and everyone else who created the original.

For years all I seemed to be doing was lobbying politicians and others to persuade them that European culture needed movies, and that we had to protect it.

I grew up with a lot of Hollywood films. Cozy farm houses, cowboys, nice flats in New York. Especially as a kid, those things have a huge impression on you.

I am excited about more than just youth culture, and youth is also stretching a bit longer now. But I have to say resistance and disregard keeps me excited.

I think that black people making art, women making art, and certainly black women making art is a disruptive endeavor - and it's one that I enjoy extremely.

I just don't think there's a lot of support for the woman's voice in cinema, and it becomes really difficult to raise that money and start again every time.

Even in the days of early YouTube, we always focused on narratives, and we always focused on franchises. We didn't do a lot of vlogging and stuff like that.

There's always a theme I'm drawn to, that we humans are not good or bad. We're all a mixture of both. We can have great compassion or commit great violence.

I've never had a good game plan. At a certain point, making independent films became more and more appealing to me because I like freshness and originality.

I'll start by saying that "Fifty Shades of Grey:" It's like I don't have. an elicit confused relationship to my sexuality. So I don't need a book like that.

I've been a little haphazard about how nude I get, and the only thing that keeps me from getting anxious about it is that I've had complete control over it.

We're living in a world where [Judy Blume] books were ever banned, and now like "Fifty Shades of Grey" is being read in high schools. Like it's just a wild.

Everybody gets sick; everybody has had a problem with insurance or the prescription drugs they're supposed to be taking or an elderly parent who needs care.

There's a lot of ridiculous hypocrisy about sex in films today. And that's one of the reasons why I made 9 Songs, to say, "Why can't you put sex in a film?"

I never know if my picture is a good picture or a bad picture, because I'm not making pictures thinking of the public, I'm making pictures to realize myself.

The Arabs have a God, the Jews have another, and the Catholics have another! And they're all fighting to maintain that they worship the one real God. Idiots!

I always think that if you look at anyone in detail, you will have empathy for them because you recognize them as a human being, no matter what they've done.

Every time I feel depressed or frustrated, I just have to drive on the highway during rush hours, then I feel very grateful I don't have to do this everyday.

The Tour de France would make a great movie. Drugs, corruption, political chicanery, guys risking their lives - everything you need for a great sports drama.

Since I shoot, record audio and edit, I was able to begin the filming without hiring a crew and create a sample to show broadcasters and grant organizations.

I would never say no to anything that sounded interesting! The thing I like about making films is that the adventure just begins when you pick up the camera.

When we return wild animals to nature, we merely return them to what is already theirs. For man cannot give wild animals freedom, they can only take it away.

It's not surprising to me that in a country born of racial genocide, the issue of race is still an open wound on the American soul. We haven't dealt with it.

Healthcare should be between the doctor and the patient. And if the doctor says something needs to be done, the government should guarantee it gets paid for.

We ignore our own history. We ignore all these values and valuable people who really changed everything, who sacrificed their own lives for a better America.

Economic research demonstrates that tax dollars spent in early childhood development provide extraordinary return on investment-16% for high quality programs

Do not dismiss the words of the old; they possess wisdom, which comes only with age, and often speak of things that the young are too immature to understand.

I've always wanted to make a film about the Tong Wars, the rioting and the crime factions in San Francisco's Chinatown in the early part of the last century.

It is always good to work with a very regular group of people because we know how high we can fly and what are the parameters, and it becomes very enjoyable.

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