“By definition a sequel can’t be original. So you’ve got to figure out what worked the first time around.”

There is something about being a director where, for me personally, I get to . . . it’s the closest I’ll ever come to being able to be a stand up.

I haven’t read a review of one of my films for the best part of 10 years.

And then through editing, and finishing the effects and adding music, you get to make the movie better again. So I’m really hard on myself and on the movie.

And my feeling was if I was going to succeed as a director, I had to just be a director and give up the safety net of being a cameraman.

I’m not the one or two take guy, but I’m not the 20, 30, 50, 70 take guy either. If I do a bunch of takes, like more than five or six, it’s usually for some technical reasons.

These movies are like my kids. I just love them to death. Some of them go to Harvard and some of them can barely graduate high school.

I was seeing a lot of really good things about Get Shorty when it came out, and my wife pointed out that if you validate the good reviews, you also have to validate the bad reviews.

Michael Jackson wanted to be in Men in Black II. He told me he had seen the first Men in Black in Paris and had stayed behind and sat there and wept.

Michael worked one day. Everybody was a little freaked out and nervous because he’s a really big star. We were already working with really big stars, but Michael is Michael.

When I move from being a cameraman to being a director I looked at a lot of other cameramen who tried to make the move. And in each case they moved up their camera operator to be the DP, which really meant they didn’t want to give up being the DP, and really wanted to do both.

It felt scary because there was no auditioning, no rehearsing.

And to use my particular sense of humor, and hear people laughing, without me having to stand up in front of an audience and tell jokes.

I had to explain to him that it was a comedy.

The first cut I do is usually between five and 10 minutes shorter then the cut that we release.

The weird thing is that I hate to fly, and the quote that I give people is that every time I get off a plane, I view it as a failed suicide attempt.

Growing up, my fascination was all things dinosaur, and as an adult, I’ve had some success making films about aliens, so this is a dream come true.

deferring gratification is a good definition of being civilized.

A fractal is a mathematical set or concrete object that is irregular or fragmented at all scales…

In mathematics and science definition are simple, but bare-bones. Until you get to a problem which you understand it takes hundreds and hundreds of pages and years and years of learning.

Mathematics is the science which draws necessary conclusions.

We have not yet arrived, but every point at which we stop requires a re-definition of our destination.

progress, whatever your definition of it, is not inevitable.

The definition of love is giving.

Having been brought up with a definition of faith as adherence to a set of beliefs, I have more and more begun to turn instead toward a definition of faith as openness to truth, whatever truth may turn out to be.