“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.”

Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people.

In a mad world only the mad are sane.

Man is a genius when he is dreaming.

The characters in my films try to live honestly and make the most of the lives they’ve been given.

The great appeal of film is its relatability.

Human beings share the same common problems. A film can only be understood if it depicts these properly.

A film made in this spirit reveals the hearts of the crew.

It is the power of memory that gives rise to the power of imagination.

There is something that might be called cinematic beauty. It can only be expressed in a film, and it must be present for that film to be a moving work.

One of techniques of modern art is simplification, and that I must therefore simplify this film.

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.

They do not realize that, in a system where there is no market, where the government directs everything, all those other freedoms are illusory, even if they are made into laws and written up in constitutions.

I didn’t make a film because I wanted a starring role. I made a film because I wanted to tell a story and I wanted to prove that I could direct.

Music stimulates within us direct experience of expanded reality

In particular in how [Barack Obama] has directed what you could describe as patronizing remarks to African-American communities.

In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside.

We have found a direct correlation between grit and positive emotions, but the fact that I have no evidence that grit is bad for you doesn’t mean it’s not. It’s always a possibility that in the future researchers will discover a downside to grit.

The direct tyranny will come on by and by, after it shall have gratified the multitude with the spoil and ruin of the old institutions of the land.

When you are looking for corruption, you should look at the entire stratum of the society, while some forms of corruption are direct, others are indirect.