“The very reasons sometimes that you make a film are the reasons for its failure.”

“My strength is with actors. I think I'm good at working with them to get the best performances, at seeing what it is that they have and that the story needs.”

“If you list the qualities that we consider feminine, they are patience, understanding, empathy, supportiveness, a desire to nurture. Our culture tells us those are feminine traits, but they're real...”

“I do have a responsibility, but I would make the most boring films in the world if I woke up every morning worrying about my social responsibility.”

“I mean, certainly writing, painting, photography, dance, architecture, there is an aspect of almost every art form that is useful and that merges into film in some way.”

“If I want to make people moved or cry in a film, I figure out what the room looks like, what the people are wearing, what time of day it is, what the light is, how to photograph it, where to put th...”

“The dangerous temptation of wildlife films is that they can lull us into thinking we can get by without the original models -- that we might not need animals in the flesh.”

“Women think in [Douglas] Sirks films. Something which has never struck me with other directors. None of them. Usually women are always reacting, doing what women are supposed to do, but in Sirk the...”

“The cinema is truth 24 frames-per-second”

“The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.”

“There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.”

“The moral of the tale is, don't live for the approval of others. The real you is here to find out the secret of life, not to satisfy someone else's opinion.”

“Thought leadership is first and foremost life leadership.”

“More powerful than the mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.”

“In what you say of another, apply the test of kindness, necessity and truth, and let nothing pass your lips without a 2/3 majority.”