Quotes on Thinking

Rather than trying to put an end to Eminem or some other rapper, politicians should think about why they're rapping. It's easier to try to censor some kid who's swearing about poverty than it is to stop the poverty.

If you start out looking at somebody, wondering whether he's good or bad, I think you're starting out in the wrong direction. I think we're all good and we're all bad.

Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes from your knees and thighs.

I am someone who takes everything very literally. I simply do not understand irony, a defect I have had ever since I was able to think independently.

Sometimes people call me a success for all the reasons that make me think I'm a failure

I think anyone who's perfectly happy isn't particularly funny.

It's not the side effects of the cocaine. . . . I'm thinking that it must be love.

I think fame itself is not a rewarding thing. The most you can say is that it gets you a seat in restaurants.

People want to know why the South is so interested in the Civil War. I had maybe, it's a rough guess, about fifty fistfights in my life. Out of those fifty fistfights, the ones that I had the most vivid memory of were the ones I lost. I think that's one reason why the South remembers the war more than the North does.

A fellow who has a funny bone can learn to hone his skills, but I don't think you can develop a funny bone - you either have it or you don't. And by the way - when you get it, we don't know it.

People say to me, 'You seem to have made this conscious decision to do independent films'. In reality, I haven't. After each movie, I always think, 'how different can I possibly be? Is this going to challenge me, is this going to inspire me, and is this going to make me love my job more than I already do?'

At the end of the day, anything I think I'm sacrificing I'm just giving up because it makes me feel better.

Mediocrity is my biggest fear. I'm not afraid of total failure because I don't think that will happen. I'm not afraid of success because that beats the hell out of failure. It's being in the middle that scares me.

Everyone has a story, and the story changes, and the more I can root into the truth of things - it's so hard - I don't think anyone ever really puts it all together. But somewhere along the way it all became fused.

I never think that a film should answer questions for you. I think it should make you ask a lot of questions.

My mother always told me, even if a song has been done a thousand times, you can still bring something of your own to it. I'd like to think I did that.

I have a very low regard for cynics. I think it's the beginning of dying.

People think, because we're young, we aren't complex, but that's not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.

You the one that I dream about all day. You the one that I think about always. You are the one so I make sure I behave! My love is your love, your love is my love.

I think the band can really swing when it swings easy, when it can just play along like you are cutting butter.

I'm going to insist on making sure that we've got decent funding, that we've got enough teachers, that we've got computers in the classroom, but unless you turn off the television set and get over a certain anti-intellectualism that I think pervades some low-income communities, our children are not going to achieve.