My best days do seem like a distillation of all that was best about school. Write a story! Paint a picture! Write a poem! Make a print!

When you're improvising, you connect with people in a way you don't in normal life, strangely.

I've made movies that cost less than one car chase.

Something different happens to my brain when I put pen to paper: the pace of writing or drawing slows you down and gives you more time for thoughts to come in.

It's up to the person who's being creative to find ways to emerge and shake up the world of wealth.

I'd just recorded it in Mariah Carey's studio. They thought the song was perfect for Nina, because she's so shy, so it was nice to have that connection with Nina in the song. It was special.

When I work alone, it can be like dabbling with a canvas. Maybe you paint over bits, and it starts to form its own life and lead you off in a direction. It becomes an intuitive, subconscious process.

John Huston is more of a creative director than most.

I think Jack Thorne is an exceptional writer.

I hate sitting around a table and talking about what a play might mean. I'm the person who's always like, 'Can we get up on our feet and just do it?'

I learned at an early age that I could make the things that I wanted. That's a very powerful thing to realize as a kid. LEGOs were a key part of that.

My principal job is to make interesting and entertaining films, and I'm not proud of which format or which particular technique I use. I just wanted the film to look good.

People criticize you for trying new things. I think, 'I'm new! I'm 22!' I don't know exactly what my sound is or what I want my album to sound like, so I'm not releasing it yet. While I'm...

It doesn't matter where it is in the world or who I'm making the movie with; that's the closest thing that I've got to a sense of placement.

For me, I prefer to work on my own. I feel like I can tap into a more genuine place, and I feel like my best stuff comes from writing on my own in my own zone.

In 2007, I probably wrote four screenplays in the entire year. Every three months I was writing a screenplay.

Technically, I direct, I'm a writer, and I do all these things, but I never went to school for them. It's just something you pick up; it's like its own art, basically.

I've said, for a long time, my favorite part of my career is when I'm creating a new thing where I'm pulling from a new place.

I believe in tradition and innovation, authenticity and passion.

I do feel like in filmmaking you are largely in control of the perception of you. If you want to be seen as the comedic person you've got to write a comedy and go after that.

Fire is the origin of stone. By working the stone with heat, I am returning it to its source.

I can't make a song for a particular person or demographic. If I love it, I'm gonna do it. I have to perform it for the rest of my life. A song is like a tattoo - you can never get away from it.

The success of one film may convince the filmmaker to try to repeat his successes and get into a competition with himself. One cannot dwell on periodic successes. You have to look at it as a...

I think we're past the point in entertainment where you can have one thing and explode. If you have one thing, people ask, 'All right, what else?' You have to be multihyphenate.

The biggest thing about me, as an actor, is I'm never a finished product, you know? I always want to try something or be in a new genre because, one, it's much more fun to do that because you're not...

I think copyright is moral, proper. I think a creator has the right to control the disposition of his or her works - I actually believe that the financial issue is less important than the integrity of...

If I didn't have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist.

The music is the main thing and it's just as easy to write acceptable words.

As to the pure mind all things are pure, so to the poetic mind all things are poetical.

Songwriting is therapeutic for me.