“I can’t afford to hate anyone. I don’t have that kind of time.”

It is to make it nurture and grow that I write my script- it is directing it that makes my tree blossom and bear fruit.

I believe that it is this quality that draws people to come and see a film, and that it is the hope of attaining this quality that inspires the filmmaker to make his film in the first place.

If you want to be a great director, be a great screenwriter.

I am not a special person, I am not especially strong; I am not especially gifted.

I believe this is what the medieval Noh playwright and theorist Zeami meant by ‘watching with a detached gaze.’

During the shooting of a scene the director’s eye has to catch even the minutest detail. But this does not mean glaring concentratedly at the set.

I have no idea who the characters are, later, their personalities take over anything I might want to do.

Movie directors, or should I say people who create things, are very greedy and they can never be satisfied… That’s why they can keep on working.

For me, filmmaking combines everything. That’s the reason I’ve made cinema my life’s work. In films, painting and literature, theatre and music come together. But a film is still a film.

If I were to write anything at all, it would turn out to be nothing but talk about movies. In other words, take ‘myself,’ subtract ‘movies,’ and the result is ‘zero.’

I suppose all of my films have a common theme. If I think about it, though, the only theme I can think of is really a question: Why can’t people be happier together?

When I start on a film I always have a number of ideas about my project. Then one of them begins to germinate, to sprout, and it is this, which I take and work with.

When it is very well expressed, one experiences a particularly deep emotion while watching that film.

My films come from my need to say a particular thing at a particular time. The beginning of any film for me is this need to express something.

To be an artist means to search, to find and look at these realities. To be an artist means to never look away.

A truly good movie is enjoyable too. There’s nothing complicated about it.

The third petition of the Lord’s Prayer is repeated daily by millions who have not the slightest intention of letting anyone’s will be done but their own.

If you can’t be yourself, what’s the point of being anyone else?

If you imagine the world listening, you’ll never write a line. That’s why privacy is so important. You should write first drafts as if they will never be shown to anyone.

[John D. Rockefeller] didn’t care about anyone he did anything just to be rich and be the only company standing without any competition. He destroyed anyone else.

Graham Greene at 82 years old was still writing, and I don’t think anyone can deny the force, the expertise, and the unique quality of his writing, if you take his complete oeuvre.

We have collectively witnessed a fundamental unexpected event, fundamental precisely because unexpected, not foreseen by anyone.

I motivate others by making sure that they understand to go after their dreams and dont let anyone tell you you cant. If you are motivated enough and put the work in that you can achieve anything in life that you set your mind to.

I began to see what people were capable of doing. Anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.