“I like the incongruity of how in Iran, these people we think of as being revolutionaries or fanatics or whatever are just as aware of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader as our people are back home.”

There is currency to celebrity, or celebrity is a currency. You can spend it in a lot of ways, or you can squander it. You can be taxed, as well. I really started thinking long and hard about how to use that currency as long as I had it.

I try to cast really good actors and give them a chance to do their very best work, give them as much time and space as they need.

One guy told me I was a great actor, I just would never be on the cover of a magazine.

When I look up at the screen and see myself I always have to laugh. Not because I think I’m doing a horrible job, quite the contrary, I just feel it’s so surreal to feel like one person can entertain so many at one time.

I’m much more interested in what an actor has to say about something substantial and important than who they’re dating or what clothes they’re wearing or some other asinine, insignificant aspect of their life.

I have three women in the house. I get to be wrong three times a day.

If I ever woke up with a dead hooker in my hotel room, Matt would be the first person I’d call.

Studios are used to have an investment in you, an actual, literal investment in an actor. You paid them some money, you had a contract with them and you were almost like a commodity.

It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life, because that’s going to happen. All that matters is that you gotta get up.

Sometimes the people we meet change us forever.

There’s a lot of romance to sort of living by your own rules and sort of not subscribing to what society tells you to do, but society pushes back pretty strongly, so there’s a lot of compromise that goes with that.

I’ve never held myself up particularly high when I had movies that worked, and I never held myself all that low when I had failures.

I like to think that if I were gay I would be out. Rupert Everett-style.

Directing is monumentally complicated and it’s a function of all the time you pay to it. I think it would be great to do a movie I’m not in, I could just eat Fritos and just say, ‘yeah, it’s good!’ Some day.

Sometimes I get insecure about being a real director because I look at the great directors, and they have such command. But maybe that keeps me critical of myself. Maybe it keeps me moving forward.

People ascribe a certain kind of silliness to the movie business. Everybody feels like, “In the movies, they do crazy stuff.”

If you observe awareness steadily, this awareness itself becomes the Guru that will reveal the Truth.

Even if we remain unaware of it, our belongings really work hard for us, carrying out their respective roles each day to support our lives.

Once the current of awareness of the self is set afoot, it becomes everlasting and continuous by intensification.

Sense-perceptions can only be indirect knowledge, and not direct knowledge. Only one’s own awareness is direct knowledge.

Consciousness is indeed always with us. Everyone knows ‘I am!’ No one can deny his own being.

Gifts are like fish-hooks; for who is not aware that the greedy char is deceived by the fly which he swallows?

See who is the doubter, who is the thinker. It is the ego. Hold it; the other thoughts will die away – the ego will be left pure. See the source from where the ego arises and abide in it. That is pure consciousness.

Does one require proof of one’s own being? Only remain aware of yourself and all else will be known.