“I like an interesting movie even if it’s controversial or offensive, depending on your taste.”

I’m a fake intellectual.

I feel like Hollywood is a big high school again. Seriously, Ashton Kutcher is the prom king.

I always enjoyed movies and in hindsight I realise how captivating they were to me.

I just want to be in good things that I want to see, and I want to work with talented people who are smarter than myself.

There’s no conversation more boring than talking about what it’s really like to live in Newport and how the show compares to the real thing. I just don’t care.

If I don’t direct a movie at some point, I’ve failed personally.

It’s bad writing, however naturalistic it’s written, that’s where you have to do your best acting.

My best jokes are so cheap. All I do is say things sarcastically.

I worry that I can come off smarmy. I wonder if I was listening to myself if I’d want to kick my own ass.

Really, as long as I am working and have diversity, I am happy.

And in a world without heroes, as the movie trailer voice-over guy might say, the slightly awkward can be slightly cool.

I like great directors who are scarce. Prolific ones are nice too but for me, there’s something about the scarcity that makes it all the more valuable.

Most of the time, my favorite drama has comedy in it as well. I think most good dramas have comedy in there. And all of the dramatic actors I look up to are also very funny.

I have been in teen shows for years, so doing that stuff – kissing – is kind of commonplace and not a big deal. It was way more cool just because it was Meg Ryan.

I am super-proud to have a sort of famous character in my background that if you’re a certain age, he was probably a part of your youth. I think that’s pretty cool.

I do think that sometimes you can invent more palatable or digestible reasons versions or reasons, when perhaps you don’t want to admit the truth to yourself, and sometimes we deceive ourselves – along with others – about our reasons and motives.

I think controversy has this allusion of being controversial but it’s totally not, which is why I’m trying to get away from it because it’s just easy and automatic.

It’s not controversial to say that human activity is contributing in some way. The question is how serious that is.

Some of the record company people, they wouldn’t let me put this out, … They said it would be too controversial. But this picture is saying ‘Look, they can stand together. Don’t have to be no fight.’

I decided I ought to pick a project that would not be controversial, that would not really cost the government a lot of money.

I admire Madonna because she always did whatever she felt like doing. She went through some controversial periods when people rejected her, but she kept on reinventing herself.

As soon as something like Monty Python’s ‘The Life of Brian’ appears with a Muhammad figure as the main lead, directed by an Arabic Theo van Gogh, the controversial late Dutch filmmaker, we will have taken an enormous step forward.

I curated this show [Shanghai Biennale ], I was by no means trying to shock people or be controversial.

Many times I heard Imam Ahmad saying (when asked to give his opinion) on controversial scholarly issues ‘I do not know.’