The wonderful thing about Clint is you can never second guess how he is going to react to anything.

I have some kind of knack for getting to know or becoming very close with people I've long admired.

'Balls of Fury' was my first time directing, and that's a movie that I think parts of it are great.

I don't believe in reincarnation. That's a cop-out, I know. I don't really want to be reincarnated.

When people show you who they are, believe them. I carry that with me a lot. It has served me well.

It seems that the greatest difficulty is to find the end. Don't try to find it, it's there already.

No screenplay is possible, unless you get some attachment from somebody who's going to get it made.

I've always had a great affection for espionage stories. I like weaving them, and I like thrillers.

Making 'Pacific Rim' was a lot like what you imagined making movies would be like when you were 12.

I don't like scripts leaking. On the other hand, the more real attention a script gets, the better.

A well-off plastic surgeon can suffer just as much as an Irish lad who has been abused or whatever.

The key is a good story. If you have a good story, you have enough emotional beats that you can hit.

There's one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die - their silence.

In Hollywood through the 50s, there were black, English, and Middle European housekeepers and maids.

I coulda' had class. I coulda' been a contender! But instead I got a one way ticket to Palookaville.

Police officers see everything, and they experience everything, and they don't always act correctly.

Study what you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life. It'll be one great adventure.

Jay-Z and Kanye West are to authentic rap culture what diseased rates were to 14th century Europeans

I am the kind of person that takes everything as is and then look at it from the outside looking in.

I respect the rules of TV, the rules of keeping things commercial and interesting and pop-y and fun.

With a film, you have to pare down and take stuff out and squish it all down into a 110 page script.

Even a modicum of celebrity is hard to deal with. You see it with actors and directors all the time.

Ten years before Matrix, ten years before Crouching Tiger - I wanted to do a Hong Kong action movie.

Some people possess talent, others are possessed by it. When that happens, a talent becomes a curse.

I would guess that the price of the script really is secondary. The credit is much more the essence.

I think it's an obligation to make a movie full, so you have to see it twice to get all the moments.

'Lethal Weapon' sold apropos of nothing when I was very young, but that was a very different market.

Should a story be readily told in a PG-13 fashion, it should be for creative, not business, reasons.

Life serves up satire. Unfortunately. Or fortunately. I don't know. You have to reel it in to drama.

Invariably, what I'm trying to do is more ambitious than the budget, but we manage to do it somehow.

Editing is a very tough period. You're confronted with yourself. It's a deep, dark, truthful mirror.

Wisdom is not having illusions, especially anything in your own mind that elevates you above others.

First of all, just to get Diner made would have been an achievement in that I got a chance to direct.

And it's not only films, I'm pretty unaware of anything that's going on in popular culture right now.

I always noticed that in art school, that grief was considered more profound than happiness. But why?

Everything is funny from some angle, I assure you it is. It's just a matter of where you're standing.

Our statement's on the screen. Awards won't make it better, and a lack of awards won't make it worse.

As long as you tell the best story possible, you can trust that people will be able to connect to it.

'Lincoln' was OK; I thought it was a rock-solid eight out of 10, but it shouldn't win all the awards.

Education can get you the only thing that really matters in today's world--an assigned parking space.

When you're on a boat, it is this tiny little island where you have to be completely self-sufficient.

I was reading a lot of Jacques Derrida at the time, writing 'Beth.' He actually talked about zombies.

A benevolent mind, and the face assumes the patterns of benevolence. An evil mind, then an evil face.

When you start and you're taking the character seriously, it's going to lead down a variety of paths.

An X-wing fighter flies like an airplane. If you look at the physics, it's actually quite impossible.

Hitch was interested in what I had to offer, like one of my background ideas for Norman's upbringing.

'The Sixth Sense' is fine the second time around, but honestly, the first time around, it's dazzling.

I eat 'The Walking Dead' like its made of brains. Can't even watch the show, I love the book so much.

It's taken me 15 years to step behind a camera and make something everyone agrees looks like a movie.

It's silly that anyone in this world tells you that there are only certain people that can marry you.

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