“Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.”

My wife is the fact-checker, I’m in the story telling business.

I feel a kinship with anyone who feels that their road, their life or who they really are is not good enough. I really relate to that.

It’s pretty hard to get mugged in Manhattan.

At a very young age I was allowed to go into the cinema and watch adult films.

If Paris is a city of lights, Sydney is the city of fireworks.

The ugly duckling is a misunderstood universal myth. It’s not about turning into a blonde Barbie doll or becoming what you dream of being; it’s about self-revelation, becoming who you are.

Why live life from dream to dream, and dread the day when dreaming ends.

Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don’t manage that – but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.

Look, I had a passion for comic books growing up.

Having grown up far, far away in a small country town in Australia, I was only slightly aware of hip-hop.

When I was growing up you would see big American films that really mythologised their landscape, that really showed the vastness and the drama of their country.

The race is long but in the end it is only with YOURSELF.

There’s a whole system in Hollywood where the director never speaks to the studio, but I like to engage them in a discussion. I listen.

In terms of the mechanics of story, myth is an intriguing one because we didn’t make myth up; myth is an imprinture of the human condition.

I wouldn’t take a directing job if I didn’t think it was enriching life.

I really believe musical form will go on. There’s got to be a way of making musical form in cinema live again.