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

Money often costs too much.

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

It is totally different making films in the East than in the West. In the East, I make my own Jackie Chan films, and it’s like my family. Sometimes I pick up the camera because I choreograph all the fighting scenes, even when I’m not fighting. I don’t have my own chair. I just sit on the set with everybody.

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.

Watch your finances like a hawk.

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

A penny saved is a penny earned.

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

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

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

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

‚Mystic River‘ just smelled interesting to me. So I read it and liked it right away. Even the dialogue in it was great.

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

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

I’ve done everything I wanted to do, even if I have had to pay a very high price – which has been the case most of the time.

Being a stunt coordinator, I have to take care not only of myself but I have to make sure everyone is safe.

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.

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.

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

The movie business is a big gamble.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

I think that I know the value of a dollar.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.

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.

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.

Never spend your money before you have earned it.

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

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.

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.

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic.

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

One day, I want to make a PG film.

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.

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.

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.

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.‘

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

When I first starting making money, when I first made my first six-digits, I was – my big thing was I went to put super unleaded in my truck for the first time.

Thrift is of great revenue.

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.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many great directors. Different styles, as well, like Gus Van Sant. He just does the casting and the milieu and let’s you do your thing, quietly. Bertolucci, who can talk to you about your internal world in quite a creative way or just say, ‚Well, put your hand over here.‘

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

I have been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years, and in 1970, when I first started directing, I said, ‚If I could pull this off, I can some day move to the back of the camera and stay there.‘

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

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

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