“As a writer, I demand the right to write any character in the world that I want to write. I demand the right to be them, I demand the right to think them and I demand the right to tell the truth as I see they are.”

As a viewer, the minute I start getting confused, I check out of the movie. Emotionally, I’m severed.

Movies are not about the weekend that they’re released, and in the grand scheme of things, that’s probably the most unimportant time of a film’s life.

I don’t believe in elitism. I don’t think the audience is this dumb person lower than me. I am the audience.

Just because I was at an anti-police brutality protest, doesn’t mean I’m anti-police. We want justice, but stop shooting unarmed people.

I want to have the fun of doing anime and I love anime, but I can’t do storyboards because I can’t really draw and that’s what they live and die on.

When people ask me if I went to film school I tell them, ‘no, I went to films.’

I don’t think there’s anything to be afraid of. Failure brings great rewards – in the life of an artist.

To be a novelist, all I need is a pen and a piece of paper.

Violence in real life is terrible; violence in movies can be cool. It’s just another colour to work with.

Movies are my religion and God is my patron. I’m lucky enough to be in the position where I don’t make movies to pay for my pool. When I make a movie, I want it to be everything to me; like I would die for it.

Don’t write what you think people want to read. Find your voice and write about what’s in your heart.

I write movies about mavericks, about people who break rules, and I don’t like movies about people who are pulverised for being mavericks.

Violence is fun, man.

I want to top expectations. I want to blow you away.

I loved history because to me, history was like watching a movie.

The easiest way to kill a cult is to make that cult accessible.

You demanded silence and I became sonorous.

Well, the whole history of Star Trek is the market demand.

A man rejects God neither because of intellectual demands nor because of the scarcity of evidence. A man rejects God because of a moral resistance that refuses to admit his need for God.

The demand for organic food is growing at a remarkable rate. Consumers have made it clear that they want organic produce and every sector of the food chain is responding, with the kind of results we have just seen.

One of the most serious problems that our country has inherited an unwillingness to talk to anyone who disagrees with us or who won’t accept, before a discussion, all the premises that we demand.

Had Mittag-Leffler had his way, I should have to wait until the year 1984, which to me seemed too great a demand!

ULTIMATUM, n. In diplomacy, a last demand before resorting to concessions.

For me the most radical demand of Christian faith lies in summoning the courage to say yes to the present risenness of Jesus Christ.