I see religion more as a truck stop on your way to figuring out who you are.
What we're seeing now is that greed is still alive and kicking, and banks are bigger than ever.
Seeing the world is the best education you can get. You see sorrow, and you also see great spirit and will to survive.
We sometimes let ourselves be rated too much by others - we put so much emphasis on a paycheck or what a magazine says.
I'm an Obama supporter, no question. But it doesn't mean there's nothing to learn from the other side.
I am obsessively bent on quality - to an unhealthy degree.
The Internet has done a wonderful thing for us. But democracy doesn't work unless people are well informed, and I don't know that we are. People just don't have the time.
So much of making movies is about discovery on the day, what you're figuring out. If you know everything going in, then it's not worth doing - it's already done.
Family - and certainly kids and a stable relationship - is something bigger than yourself. They need you to sit down with them, be there for them when they wake up in the middle of the night.
It might be a very human thing across the board, but we, in America, love a story - we need a story to get involved in. But then everything becomes more about how the story protects a certain perception as we pick sides.
I tell all the young guys, don't make choices because somebody else is telling you it's good from a career-maintenance perspective.
I think someone's conversation, whether in e-mail or in person, should be private.
Certainly the attrition rate of Hollywood couples looms large.
I just don't like the separatism that comes from religion, and, without fail, the need to put your beliefs on someone else. When you start telling someone else how to live, you should check yourself, man.
In some ways, I'm still a kid from Missouri and Oklahoma, and I'm trying to find my way.
You want to stake your own claim. You don't want to be called a copycat.
Once you get older, you get a little closer to yourself, intimate.
To leave home, it's got to be worth leaving.
I'm actually very snobbish about directors. I have to say 'no' all the time. 'No' is the most powerful word in our business. You've got to protect yourself.
My training is documented on film.
I always knew I was going somewhere - going out. I just knew. I just knew. I just knew there were a lot more points of view out there.
If I'm going to work, I want to work with my wife.
I'd say that 'Tree of Life' is not a Christian so much as a spiritual film.
One of the greatest, smartest things I ever did was give my kids Angie as their mom. She is such a great mom. Oh, man, I'm so happy to have her.
'The Assassination of Jesse James' remains one of my favorite films that I've done. You know, it's still labeled a loser.
I think L.A. is impossible. There's just too much media focus. You can't live a normal life.
I always thought that if I wanted to do a family, I wanted to do it big. I wanted there to be chaos in the house.
I always liked film as a teaching tool - a way of getting exposed to ideas that had never been presented to me. It just wasn't on the list of career options where I grew up.
I would love to work in a Bollywood film as there is so much drama and colour in the films there.
Indian cinema seems to be growing very well at its own pace.
