I’ve choreographed all of my movies.

It was a challenge, to work with Oliver Stone.

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

All the screen cowboys behaved like real gentlemen. They didn’t drink, they didn’t smoke. When they knocked the bad guy down, they always stood with their fists up, waiting for the heavy to get back on his feet. I decided I was going to drag the bad guy to his feet and keep hitting him.

So many writers don’t like to write… I like to write, and sometimes I’m afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don’t want to leave it. And as a result, I’ll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn’t something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing – it’s just an expression of me.

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

I’ve always loved the idea of playing Black Adam.

I really like children to watch my movies.

I love music, and after my first experience with movies, I can’t wait to do more.

I personally don’t like to go see romantic comedies. But people do want to see them, and they seem to want to see me in them.

If my films make one more person miserable, I’ll feel I have done my job.

Steven Spielberg was my childhood hero.

For me it’s always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it’s always sound first and then the line afterwards.

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

I felt like I had a really bad case of writer’s block… Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can’t get it out, I start feeling bad about myself – a lot of self-loathing.

I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters – to make them personalities.

Usually I start with a beat, I start making a beat, and my producer side is making the beat. And on a good day, my rapper side will jump in and start the writing process – maybe come up with a hook or start a verse. Sometimes it just happens like that. A song like ‚Lights Please‘ happens like that.

Movies can and do have tremendous influence in shaping young lives in the realm of entertainment towards the ideals and objectives of normal adulthood.

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn’t really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I’m trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

Football games are on TV, and it doesn’t affect stadium attendance at all. It’s the same with movies. People who really love movies and like to go out on a Saturday night will go to the movie theater.

Hollywood has a way of making everything seem like an overnight success.

I have kind of a funny relationship with movies. I don’t have to see the whole movie to get an impression of it or to let it have an influence on me.

Movies were invented for Jimmy Cagney, and he was invented for the movies. A perfect match.

‚House of Balloons‘ was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.

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

I know about two things: ‚Rocky III‘ and Clubber Lang, and ‚A-Team‘ and B.A. Baracus. That’s who I am!

Those movies sure got me into a rut.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.

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 took Simone a long time to understand why people want Daddy’s autograph. I’d tell her, and my wife would tell her, too, ‚People see Daddy in the movies, and they are excited to meet him.‘ But she couldn’t really grasp it.

Changes are not unusual – I mean, most movies, when they release them, they make changes. But somehow, when I make the slightest change, everybody thinks it’s the end of the world.

I love to pop up at the movie theaters. I love to treat the people who are there.

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.

I’d go from film to film and almost detach from one world and jump in another. I was living as these people and not having a self. I didn’t know who I was. And things just get really dark.

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.‘

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.

I have a love interest in every one of my films: a gun.

I sure lost my musical direction in Hollywood. My songs were the same conveyer belt mass production, just like most of my movies were.

I don’t watch television and I rarely go to the cinema, but I recently watched ‚The King’s Speech‘ on a flight. It was so beautiful and so simple.

I didn’t have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

Probably the reason it’s a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you’re getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you’re going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there’s a kind of bundle.

Jonathan Demme is a very sharp editor of his movies.

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

I never expected anyone to take care of me, but in my wildest dreams and juvenile yearnings, I wanted the house with the picket fence from June Allyson movies. I knew that was yearning like one yearns to fly.

I just felt that if I went into Speed 2, I just… wouldn’t have come up out of the water.

I watched Titanic when I got back home from the hospital, and cried. I knew that my IQ had been damaged.

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

Whether you come back by page or by the big screen, Hogwarts will always be there to welcome you home.

One of the skills I had to learn and become proficient in is kissing a man. I had never kissed a man. Will Smith did it in his movies, so did Jake Gyllenhaal, and I figured it was my time. So it was me and Steve Carell – fantastic.

I was never interested in being powerful or famous. But once I got to film school and learned about movies, I just fell in love with it. I didn’t care what kind of movies I made.

I love making movies, but there’s nothing like performing live.

I would love to sign on to do a movie if it was the right role and if it was the right script, because I would be taking time away from music to tell a big grand story, and spend all of my time and pouring all of my emotions into being someone else. So for me to do that, it would have to be a story worth telling.

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

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

I never thought, in my lifetime, that you’d be able to watch movies, read books and listen to music from a phone, but I guess the technology of tomorrow is here today.

When I write, when I’m going hot, I don’t want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you’re pushing it.

Movies are fun, but they are no cure for cancer.

I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset – tears are words waiting to be written.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.