I feel like I might be a designer or stylist – or a director because I have always been super interested in cameras and editing.

The present letter is a very long one, simply because I had no leisure to make it shorter.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‚Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this‘ – have become commonplace in films and music too.

I’ve always said the one advantage an actor has of converting to a director is that he’s been in front of the camera. He doesn’t have to get in front of the camera again, subliminally or otherwise.

It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.

Even with cameras being very cheap, one thing that researchers noticed was that you look really bad in a videoconference image because the lighting is bad and you get shadows and things.

Alfred Hitchcock once told me, when I was analyzing a lot of things about his pictures, ‚Clint, you must remember, it’s only a movie.‘

I’ve choreographed all of my movies.

I write the paragraph, then I’m crossing out, changing words, trying to improve it. When it seems more or less OK, then I type it up because sometimes it’s almost illegible, and if I wait, I might not be able to read it the next day.

It’s very rare that you get a director that lets you be creative and bring what you feel your character should do or should be.

I really hope someday in Hollywood, some producer or director will hire me only to do drama.

Every relationship should eventually become a long-term relationship. Any director that I meet now isn’t just a director. He’s potentially a friend, and someone I can call to do a project that I want or that I have.

I’m different from any other designer, businesswise, in that I’ve built this company up and I own it. I never had business hype behind me to promote my image… My image is real… I have never had marketing people telling me what to do.

Whenever I think about movies, I always look at that art process as having the best of a lot of worlds. Because if you watch a great film, you have a musical element to it, not just on the scoring, but in the way that the shots are edited – that has music and rhythm and time.

Stylistically, I love make-up. I love doing my own make-up and stuff, but clothes-wise, I actually didn’t ever really care. Initially the fashion world was more interested in me than the music world, which was strange when I first started singing.

I’ve often made revisions at that stage that turned out to be mistakes because I wasn’t really in the rhythm of the story anymore. I see a little bit of writing that doesn’t seem to be doing as much work as it should be doing, and right at the end, I will sort of rev it up. But when I finally read the story again, it seems a bit obtrusive.

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?

I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

Besides entertainment and action, I want to educate. You know, as a producer or director, we do have a responsibility to society.

I just really want to get music out and tour and go places I’ve never been, and just do more videos. I love photography and videography, and so I really want to direct videos when I can.

But, having a perfume and license, in general, is a financial necessity. A designer must, to reap back the money spent on prototypes and all that sort of thing.

In karting, in the European races, you have the cameras and the film crews and you do interviews. At around 13 I’d already started doing bit of media and it just increases more and more with every level you take, especially when you get into cars – and when you hit F1 it’s an even higher step up. It’s something you get used to over time.

None of my kids want to be actors. They are actually very interested in being musicians. I think they like the process of film from the outside. Mad is interested in editing. Pax loves music and deejaying.

Sometimes cameras and television are good to people and sometimes they aren’t. I don’t know if its the way you say it, or how you look.

Like any creative human being, I would like a bit more control so that it would be a little easier for me when the director says, ‚One tear, right now,‘ that one tear would pop out.

Cameras aren’t guns. They can’t really hurt you.

I am so excited to extend myself behind the scenes as a designer and to – as my father puts it – finally have a real job.

Substitute ‚damn‘ every time you’re inclined to write ‚very‘; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

There’s a gap between what I want to do, what I do on camera, and what gets edited. Right? So the goal is to try and close the gaps. What’s the biggest compliment is if I read a review and it’s exactly what I wrote down in my diary before ever filming it. That’s really cool. That’s the biggest signifier of closing the gaps.

Everybody accuses me of moving fast when I direct a picture. I don’t move fast, but I just keep moving.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

In my career as a director, there’s always been some point where you get halfway through it, or three-quarters, and you go: ‚What is this thing all about, and why am I telling the story? Does anybody really care about seeing this?‘ At that time you have to say: ‚OK, forget that and just go ahead.‘

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

I’m a writer first and a singer second. And then I started editing my own videos when I was 17, so it’s a process I’ve been doing since I was younger.

Because of my wrestling background, nothing a director can throw at me on a set can faze me.

In my early teens, I knew I wanted to do television production. I loved cameras, editing and producing, anything that had to do with television production. My friend had a production studio across town, and we’d go over there at night and shoot and edit. I produced my father’s televised service for 17 years.

Read over your compositions, and when you meet a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out.

The most important thing for a director is being able to communicate.

I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

There’s people constantly asking you for something on set, so the multi-tasking of motherhood transfers very well to being a director. And I think you’re compassionate.

I liked Vittorio De Sica a lot, and I got to work with him once in a segment movie. He was a great director. He was a very charismatic character and a guy I watched a lot when he was directing.

Some writers sit down without a thought of what they are going to say, and they go through draft after draft.

A director makes 100 decisions an hour. Students ask me how you know how to make the right decision, and I say to them, ‚If you don’t know how to make the right decision, you’re not a director.‘

Steven Spielberg was my childhood hero.

All of the Vines that were acted & setup & had nice cameras, those weren’t the good Vines. The good Vines were, like, a random little kid in the middle of a forest, like, yelling.

I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad… he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.

I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.

I always rewrite each day up to the point where I stopped. When it is all finished, naturally you go over it. You get another chance to correct and rewrite when someone else types it, and you see it clean in type. The last chance is in the proofs. You’re grateful for these different chances.