Making a film, setting it up and getting it cast and getting it together, is not an easy thing

How people are around a director, it really does affect everything, every detail of the life of the movie. Daniel Day-Lewis

Shoes are strange things. If you take your shoes off in a situation in which you're vulnerable, you'll feel 10 times more vulnerable.

I have no role models. Many heroes. I have an enormous capacity for hero worship.

My preference is that, that day when someone sticks a tripod in front of you with a camera on the top, it is not day one.

The greater your powers of self-delusion, the greater will be the apparent efficacy of this untruth.

I have always been intrigued by these lives I have never experienced.

I'm woefully one-track-minded.

I don't do all of this as an indulgence. I do it because I'm not a good enough actor to not do it.

I spend many months in apparently listless rumination out of which I hope something will emerge.

It's easy to love humanity when you're this far away from it.

At some point in your life, if you're lucky, you get to design the way in which things evolve.

I'm a little bit perverse, and I just hate doing the thing that's the most obvious.

If you remain unsettled by a piece of writing, it means you are not watching the story from the outside; you've already taken a step toward it.

Just stay alive, no matter what occurs! I will find you. No matter how long it takes, no matter how far. I will find you!

I love to sit and watch people. I love to sit and listen to people.

I find it difficult to be in rooms now for long periods of time. I can usually take it for about an hour. Then I stride out.

You can never fully put your finger on the reason why you're suddenly, inexplicably compelled to explore one life as opposed to another.

I didn't like the idea of being foolish, but I learned pretty soon that it was essential to fail and be foolish.