“Any society begins by realizing that together, by helping each other, you can survive better than if you fight each other and compete with each other.”

Being in Washington is more fictional than being in Hollywood.

You need peers; you need people who are at the same level you are. You never know in life when you’re going to need help, and you never know who you’re going to need it from.

All democracies turn into dictatorships – but not by coup. The people give their democracy to a dictator, whether it’s Julius Caesar or Napoleon or Adolf Hitler. Ultimately, the general population goes along with the idea.

If America is the pursuit of happiness, the best way to pursue happiness is to help other people.

Success is when you try to achieve your inward vision externally and have it come off the way you see it. Then YOU feel successful about it; that’s how success is measured.

Train yourself to let go of the things you fear to lose.

I’ve discovered that most critics themselves are cinematically illiterate. They don’t really know much about movies. They don’t know the history. They don’t know the technology. They don’t know anything. So for them to try to analyze it, they’re lost.

The technology keeps moving forward, which makes it easier for the artists to tell their stories and paint the pictures they want.

It’s not a matter of how well can you make a movie. It’s how well can you make it under the circumstance, because there’s always circumstances. You cannot use that as an excuse.

Someday you’re going to have to learn to separate what seems to be important from what really is important.

The one way the world hasn’t changed: teaching is still the most important job.

But having a really good understanding of history, literature, psychology, sciences – is very, very important to actually being able to make movies.

Education is the single most important job of the human race.

The older you get, the less seriously you take criticism. I’ve gotten to a point now where I ignore it completely. It’s just not relevant to me anymore.

From kindergarten to college, certain teachers engaged my curiosity and motivated me to learn. While I was not the best student, their efforts left a lasting impact.

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will.

We made a home for our wishes in the stars; while forgetting they were meant to be only the beginning.

Forgiving is not forgetting; its actually remembering–remembering and not using your right to hit back. Its a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you dont want to repeat what happened.

Forgiveness is truly the grace by which we enable another person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew.

Transformation begins in you, wherever you are, whatever has happened, however you are suffering. Transformation is always possible.

Endings are just new beginnings in the shape of pain and despair.

The fight for a future doesn’t end here – this is just the beginning.

To recognize one’s own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.

When I wake up, I begin my search for you.