“Being a father at a later age is different from when I had my other two daughters when I was in my 20s and 30s. If you're in your 60s and you're with the kid every day, you're dealing with the mind of a child, so it opens up that childishness in you again.”
“I don't like being in houses alone.”
“Our world is so glutted with useless information, images, useless images, sounds, all this sort of thing. It's a cacophony, it's like a madness I think that's been happening in the past twenty-five years. And I think anything that can help a person sit in a room alone and not worry about it is good.”
“Film in the 20th century, it's the American art form, like jazz.”
“It seems to me that any sensible person must see that violence does not change the world and if it does, then only temporarily.”
“As you grow older, you change.”
“Death comes in a flash, and that's the truth of it, the person's gone in less than 24 frames of film.”
“Any film, or to me any creative endeavour, no matter who you're working with, is, in many cases, a wonderful experience.”
“Very often I've known people who wouldn't say a word to each other, but they'd go to see movies together and experience life that way.”
“Working with HBO was an opportunity to experience creative freedom and 'long-form development' that filmmakers didn't have a chance to do before the emergence of shows like 'The Sopranos.'”
“It did remind me of something out of Greek mythology - the richest king who gets everything he wants, but ultimately his family has a curse on it from the Gods.”
“The fact that food plays such an important part in my films has everything to do with my family.”
“A lot of what I'm obsessed with is the relationship and the dynamics between people and the family, particularly brothers and their father.”
“Food tells you everything about the way people live and who they are.”
“If your mother cooks Italian food, why should you go to a restaurant?”
“I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.”
“There are two kinds of power you have to fight. The first is the money, and that's just our system. The other is the people close around you, knowing when to accept their criticism, knowing when to say no.”
“I think there's only one or two films where I've had all the financial support I needed. All the rest, I wish I'd had the money to shoot another ten days.”
“Young film makers should learn how to deal with the money and learn how to deal with the power structure. Because it is like a battle.”
“Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame and what's out.”
“My whole life has been movies and religion. That's it. Nothing else.”
“I've seen many, many movies over the years, and there are only a few that suddenly inspire you so much that you want to continue to make films.”
“Popular music formed the soundtrack of my life.”
“I mean, music totally comes from your soul.”
“The bottom line is, I tend to be going back to older and older music.”
“Part of making any endeavour is that each one has its own special problems. It's the nature of the process.”
“I do know that some Buddhists are able to attain peace of mind.”
“The cinema began with a passionate, physical relationship between celluloid and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it, manipulated it, and came to know it the way a lover comes to know every inch of the body of the beloved. No matter where the cinema goes, we cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings.”
“Eradicating a religion of kindness is, I think, a terrible thing for the Chinese to attempt.”
“There must be people who remember World War II and the Holocaust who can help us get out of this rut.”