"It might be a very human thing across the board, but we, in America, love a story - we need a story to get involved in. But then everything becomes more about how the story protects a certain perception as we pick sides."

"So much of making movies is about discovery on the day, what you're figuring out. If you know everything going in, then it's not worth doing - it's already done."

"Family - and certainly kids and a stable relationship - is something bigger than yourself. They need you to sit down with them, be there for them when they wake up in the middle of the night."

"I tell all the young guys, don't make choices because somebody else is telling you it's good from a career-maintenance perspective."

"Certainly the attrition rate of Hollywood couples looms large."

"I think someone's conversation, whether in e-mail or in person, should be private."

"I just don't like the separatism that comes from religion, and, without fail, the need to put your beliefs on someone else. When you start telling someone else how to live, you should check yourself, man."

"In some ways, I'm still a kid from Missouri and Oklahoma, and I'm trying to find my way."

"You want to stake your own claim. You don't want to be called a copycat."

"Once you get older, you get a little closer to yourself, intimate."

"To leave home, it's got to be worth leaving."

"I'm actually very snobbish about directors. I have to say 'no' all the time. 'No' is the most powerful word in our business. You've got to protect yourself."

"My training is documented on film."

"I always knew I was going somewhere - going out. I just knew. I just knew. I just knew there were a lot more points of view out there."

"If I'm going to work, I want to work with my wife."

"I'd say that 'Tree of Life' is not a Christian so much as a spiritual film."

"One of the greatest, smartest things I ever did was give my kids Angie as their mom. She is such a great mom. Oh, man, I'm so happy to have her."

"'The Assassination of Jesse James' remains one of my favorite films that I've done. You know, it's still labeled a loser."

"I think L.A. is impossible. There's just too much media focus. You can't live a normal life."

"I always thought that if I wanted to do a family, I wanted to do it big. I wanted there to be chaos in the house."

"I always liked film as a teaching tool - a way of getting exposed to ideas that had never been presented to me. It just wasn't on the list of career options where I grew up."

"I would love to work in a Bollywood film as there is so much drama and colour in the films there."

"Indian cinema seems to be growing very well at its own pace."

"I'm 48 now and whatever I get music-wise, I get from my kids and that's it. I don't think I'll ever be hip again!"

"When I was a little kid we moved to Tulsa, then to St. Louis and, by the time I was in kindergarten, we lived in Springfield, Missouri. There I basically grew up."

"I was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma."

"Perhaps we don't need these religious concoctions to pillow the fear of death. Just the fact that there is an unknown, and something greater, can bring a feeling of peace. That's enough for me."

"You hear stories of intense actors who can't shed their character and who don't know who they are for a week or two after. I'm not that guy, man."

"When I received my first paycheck from my now known day job, I spent it on a period Craftsman chair and a Frank Lloyd Wright-wannabe lamp. With my second paycheck, I bought a stereo."

"I don't think I was all that late in becoming a father."

"I'm much more experienced now, so I can find films that are interesting quicker and cut out the films that don't really matter. It means more to me now because my kids are going to see them, and I want them to be proud."

"I'm most comfortable with the Southern dialects, really. It's easy, for example, for me to do Irish because we've got Irish heritage where I come from."

"I would say that the directors that I've liked the most are all curious in nature - curious thinkers. They're all big questioners, I would say, first and foremost."

"To know how to hide one's ability is great skill."

"Sometimes accidents happen in life from which we have need of a little madness to extricate ourselves successfully"

"As one grows older, one becomes wiser and more foolish."

"Old men are fond of giving good advice to console themselves for their inability to give bad examples."

"Old people love to give good advice to console themselves for no longer being able to set a bad example."

"The reason why so few people are agreeable in conversation is that each is thinking more about what he intends to say than others are saying."

"We seldom find any person of good sense, except those who share our opinions."

"To safeguard one's health at the cost of too strict a diet is a tiresome illness indeed."

"It is for want of application, rather than of means that people fail,"

"There is hardly a man clever enough to recognize the full extent of the evil he does."

"Absence weakens mediocre passions and increases great ones, as the wind blows out candles and kindles fires."

"Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones, as wind extinguishes candles and fans a fire."

"We give advice, but we cannot give the wisdom to profit by it."

"Old people love to give good advice; it compensates them for their inability to set a bad example."

"The one thing people are the most liberal with, is their advice."

"It is more shameful to mistrust one's friends than to be deceived by them"

"Old people are fond of giving good advice; it consoles them for no longer being capable of setting a bad example."