On ‚Mystic River,‘ I had to cut my salary and everyone else’s to get it made.

Nobody was ever meant, To remember or invent, What he did with every cent.

It’s hard work making movies. It’s like being a doctor: you work long hours, very hard hours, and it’s emotional, tense work. If you don’t really love it, then it ain’t worth it.

Thrift is of great revenue.

In a budget, how important is art versus music versus athletics versus computer programming? At the end of the day, some of those trade-offs will be made politically.

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

I like having my hands in the clay. I like the movie-making process.

The movie business is a big gamble.

You know people talk about federal money as if it falls from heaven. You know we thank heaven for it, but it came out of people’s pockets – and I’ve driven all over Washington, D.C., I cannot find the money tree.

I like the anonymity that directors can have about their films.

Yes, I’m always – I’m always surprised when you make a film and you live with it a while and you put it out, you never dream that anybody is ever going to want to really see it.

Give me five minutes with a person’s checkbook, and I will tell you where their heart is.

Rather go to bed without dinner than to rise in debt.

Well, I think that California has had a history of always spending more money than it takes in.

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

I cap myself when I shop; I don’t like to spend extravagant amounts on clothes. But, I do get lent clothes for events, it’s scary to wear something so expensive, but I feel really pampered.

You just don’t know when you get in the editing room what you will need as a link or a tool for a transition. If you’re in a room, and there’s a kettle boiling, get a shot of it. Don’t worry if people think you’re nuts.

A penny saved is two pence clear.

Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.

Other than obvious errors like forgetting a line, often I can’t see any difference between take one and take 20.

It would be great to be 105 and still making films.

I’ve done films where we don’t rehearse, and I’ve done films where we heavily rehearse. I like rehearsals.

I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I’d ever have any interest in filmmaking.

It’s clearly a budget. It’s got a lot of numbers in it.

When grand plans for scientific and defence technologies are made, do the people in power think about the sacrifices the people in the laboratories and fields have to make?

First grade is very cheap. It’s the later grades where you have to spend a lot of money if you don’t do it right.

Every movie I make teaches me something. That’s why I keep making them.

Because my career is so important, I think I make a lot of – I wouldn’t call them sacrifices, but just concessions for my job. I love what I do, and I want to do it for a long time.

The time to save is now. When a dog gets a bone, he doesn’t go out and make a down payment on a bigger bone. He buries the one he’s got.

Where I think the most work needs to be done is behind the camera, not in front of it.

I think if you make a good movie, people walk away arguing.

In America there’s no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

Humility must always be the portion of any man who receives acclaim earned in the blood of his followers and the sacrifices of his friends.

If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.

You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

When I was a kid, there were no credit cards. Instead, retailers offered layaway plans. My mom would go to a store, such as a furniture outlet, choose the sofa she wanted, and put it on layaway. That meant she put a little money down to hold the sofa, and every payday she’d pay a little toward the purchase.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Money is like an arm or leg – use it or lose it.

Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.

I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie.

It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.

Watch your finances like a hawk.

I will make action movies, I think, for a few more years, another five years.

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.

One day, I want to make a PG film.

We might come closer to balancing the Budget if all of us lived closer to the Commandments and the Golden Rule.

I just make good movies. That’s the way I thank my fans.

Eventually, it came to this place like, ‚I’d like to direct, but I need to find the story to tell.‘ ‚Man of Tai Chi‘ became the story to tell.

Money often costs too much.

When I’m making an American film, it’s more safe because there are so many people on the set to watch me. Whatever I do, they say, ‚What are you doing!? Tell me first!‘ There are so many restrictions.

Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.

I loved the material when I first read it, and the experience of making the film was a great one. So when we came around to complete the trilogy, I just signed on board without even reading the scripts because the experience of the first film was so good.

The fashion of the world is to avoid cost, and you encounter it.

Fuel prices are at the center of our lives. They affect our ability to travel, stay warm, and feed ourselves.

My movies just kind of sneak up on you. I don’t have to worry too much about what everybody is going to say. Anyway, I really don’t pay attention to what the world says about my movies. I just care about what my buddies think.

Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.

In 3-D filmmaking, I can take images and manipulate them infinitely, as opposed to taking still photographs and laying them one after the other. I move things in all directions. It’s such a liberating experience.

When we talk about how movies used to be made, it was over 100 years of film, literal, physical film, with emulsion, that we would expose to light and we would get pictures.

I like the idea of working in different genres and transcending genres and hopefully finding success, and ultimately make movies people like.

Clearly this is a tough economic time, and a lot of families are hurting. So when we talk to parents, we talk about small changes for kids and things that don’t cost extra money. Like adding water and eliminating sugary drinks and sodas. That’s going to save money right there. Or adding a few more vegetables.