Whatever story you want to tell, tell it at the right size.

Something about Texas I'm not proud of is that our state murdered 37 people last year alone.

When I saw 'subUrbia' on stage, I started having those feelings inside me. I saw it as a film, and I felt I knew the characters, or I was the characters. It really dredged up all this stuff in me that never went away.

If you want to just make a good movie, if you don't enjoy every step and become a master of each little moment, then you shouldn't be doing it.

The arts were like, there's no opponent. It's just yourself. I'm not saying they don't make the arts a competition with awards and all that, but that's outside the work itself.

I always say I'll never make a film in Austin in summer, but I always end up here.

I think people forget how radical the narrative of 'Slacker' is. There's no story, you know? We could go from one character to the next to the next and never return.

Well, you have to keep your faith in the fact that there are a lot of intelligent people who are actively looking for something interesting, people who have been disappointed so many times.

I think they should make it a felony to criticise a film product. Particularly my film product. It's anti-American.

Some films really do take years to get going, but I'd say that most of the films I want to do are slightly smaller projects. Some could be sketches. They're not all oil paintings.

The truth will only be told over a career.

It was always kind of sad when your favorite punk rockers, like Jello Biafra or someone, would say they hate something you like. It was, 'Oh, I thought we were on the same page.'

I played baseball in high school, and in some parallel universe, if I had not gone into filmmaking, I may have been the coach cursing at the kids.

A college athlete is going to be competitive. You don't get to that level if you're not.

I grew up in Huntsville, which is a main prison town. It's crazy. The conditions are so bad in prison, often, for the inmates.

I look up and go, 'I'm living in the world I visualized a long time ago.' From making movies, to the Film Society, to just being in a film world. It's a life that I wanted to inhabit. I think everyone has the opportunity to do that in this world - it's just, are you gonna work for it, and how much does it mean to you?

Filmmakers are going to make films, just like painters are going to paint.

Artists are great. They jump in.

I was dating girls who were actresses, and that was fun, so I took a playwriting class. But that was short-lived. That was one year. Around that time, I was seeing movies that were making me think in terms of images.

You're always just trying to make your film, tell the story you're trying to tell - best you can, you know.

I don't want to be nostalgic for some kind of laid-back Austin where nothing was happening.

I grew up in a little town in east Texas where it was really not on the table to question certain things like whether you should eat meat or not.

I let the American people down.

The more you stay in this kind of job, the more you realize that a public figure, a major public figure, is a lonely man.

Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it.

I believe in the battle-whether it's the battle of a campaign or the battle of this office, which is a continuing battle.

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.

Tell them to send everything that can fly.

Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.

I wish I could give you a lot of advice, based on my experience of winning political debates. But I don't have that experience. My only experience is at losing them.

The time has come for us to draw the line. The time has come for the responsible leaders of both political parties to take a stand against overgrown Government and for the American taxpayer.

As this long and difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible.

In the television age, the key distinction is between the candidate who can speak poetry and the one who can only speak prose.

My strong point, if I have a strong point, is performance. I always do more than I say. I always produce more than I promise.

Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.

President Johnson and I have a lot in common. We were both born in small towns and we're both fortunate in the fact that we think we married above ourselves.

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can't get out.

Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.

By the time you get dressed, drive out there, play 18 holes and come home, you've blown seven hours. There are better things you can do with your time.

I brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.

When I retire I'm going to spend my evenings by the fireplace going through those boxes. There are things in there that ought to be burned.

Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.

A public man must never forget that he loses his usefulness when he as an individual, rather than his policy, becomes the issue.

At home, we must reject the mistaken notion - a notion that has dominated too much of the public dialogue for too long - that ever bigger Government is the answer to every problem.

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

I've never canceled a subscription to a newspaper because of bad cartoons or editorials. If that were the case, I wouldn't have any newspapers or magazines to read.

Castro couldn't even go to the bathroom unless the Soviet Union put the nickel in the toilet.

The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press.

We are not spending the Federal Government's money, we are spending the taxpayer's money, and it must be spent n a way which guarantees his money's worth and yields the fullest possible benefit to the people being helped.

Black Americans, no more than white Americans, they do not want more government programs which perpetuate dependency. They don't want to be a colony in a nation.