“A lot of action movies today seem to have scenes that just lead up to the action.”

“My movies are unadorned, they're not particularly fancy, I think they're kind of workmanlike in some ways, focusing on the writing and the acting.”

“I hadn't made a big-budget film, and in Hollywood there's a sort of man and boys situation. You're a man, you make $80 million movies! As if it's harder to make an $80 million movie. Well, I guess businesswise it is because you have more executives to argue with.”

“The more unique your film is and unusual it is and difficult it is, the harder it is to get it financed. That's why a lot of good filmmakers are doing television. They do HBO movies.”

“Bathroom humor, fart, and poo poo humor in movies gets a laugh. It's a pretty easy audience, and that's been around for ages.”

“Everybody's a filmmaker today.”

“I tend to think of action movies as exuberant morality plays in which good triumphs over evil.”

“I had a couple of movies that I was passionately involved with that I could never get made. 'Richard Pryor,' I wrote for - gosh - over a year. That was close to getting made for two-and-a-half years after that. We're still pushing it, you know. It is weird. Suddenly you wake up and it's like, 'God, five years have gone by.'”

“When you make a film you usually make a film about an idea.”

“I love European movies and I kind of grew up on European films.”

“For me, relationships are the real action movies. Bombs are exploding every day and the kitchen is Ground Zero.”

“And being as I'm somebody who loves movies like The Machinist, I also love going along to big mass entertainment movies. I get in the mood for all kinds of movies, and so I like to try each of them.”

“Success is not something I've wrapped my brain around. If people go to those movies, then yes, that's true, big-time success. If not, it's much ado about nothing.”

“The perceived wisdom is that people do not go in large numbers to black-and-white movies anymore - which is a great shame, but I'd love to make a black-and-white movie one day.”

“I don't know any form of art or entertainment that can affect people the way movies can. I know it sounds ridiculous, but they can change your world. They can change your views.”

“I wouldn't like to be in movies. Movie people are strange. They live a different life than musicians do.”

“I think less is more when it comes to kissing in the movies.”

“Even the worst Bond movies, there's something to love about them.”

“Unfortunately, 'chick flick' has become a term to describe most movies that I don't even like. They're these movies that, yes, have women in them but they really don't reflect who women are, and there's something kind of silly or shallow or gossipy about them.”

“If you look at anybody who's had along career, if you look at the choices they've made - even if the movies haven't worked - they've always worked with great filmmakers.”

“Man, I love the 'Lord of the Rings' movies. Some people would say I'm weird for liking those types of movies, but they are so cool.”