I went back to Dallas for a little while to finish my short film 'Rusty Forkblade.' It was not the instant success I thought it was going to be. There's a false narrative that if you make a short film right after senior year, you'll be plucked out to make a feature length film, and the rest is history. I didn't do that.
The thought that we're in competition with Russians or with Chinese is all a mistake, and trivial. We are one species, with a world to win.
I've always thought that guns are a cowardly tool in the hands of men and women trying to solve problems with each other. And cowardly in the hands of filmmakers. It's taken so lightly in films.
Yes, I won the Bafta. I thought the British were very intelligent.
I never sort of thought of myself as a comedy writer, by nature.
Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning. I was much further out than you thought, and not waving but drowning. I was much too far out all my life, And not waving but drowning.
I watched movies and thought, 'I want to be in movies,' and wanted to be an actor.
When I first went to Israel, I saw soldiers pushing Palestinians around and thought, 'I can't stand this'. Then I'd meet somebody in a bar saying what wonderful people the Palestinians are and what mamzers the Jews are, and I'd think, 'Hang on'. It should be hard to make up your mind on any serious subject.
If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.
I love writing with really experienced producers and co-writers who open my mind to things I never would have thought otherwise. We may think the same way about something, but they might say it in a way that I never would have thought to say it.
Suburbia, to me, was the most fantastical, unusual place. I thought it was Disneyland.
I couldn't be in a relationship and behave like somebody else or pretend I felt something I didn't feel. And that includes saying things I thought might jeopardize the relationship.
I'll go to an event wearing some designer gown and tens of thousands of dollars in jewels that were lent to me for the night, and I'll walk around and meet people who I always thought were such a big deal.
I like singing as much as I like acting, and all through high school I thought I might be a Broadway singer.
I thought I'd definitely be a writer, whatever I did.
I thought Jimi Hendrix... was just phenomenal.
The moment I was introduced to my wife, Emma, at a party I thought, here she is - and 20 minutes later I told her she ought to marry me. She thought I was as mad as a rat. She wouldn't even give me her telephone number - and she wrote in her diary: 'A funny little man asked me to marry him.'
If we follow the traditional way of thought, there will always be traditional enemies. Extremist circles from both sides will find causes to give rise to problems.
I've never written a song that I thought was a hit.
And in the middle of one of those scenes, I suddenly felt my heart just open: it was overwhelming, to the point where I got teary-eyed. Never would I have thought anything like that could happen in a love scene.
Would it not be much better to have a president who deliberately lied to the people because he thought a war was essential than to have one who was so dumb as to be taken in by intelligence agencies, especially those who told him what he wanted to hear?
I thought to be feminine was to give in to straight culture, or the beauty standard, but in my heart I had a flair for fashion and style. They were passions I kept secret because I didn't understand I could love clothes and hair and makeup and still like girls.
I remember rehearsing it, and it was the one that we were really excited about and thought would sound the best, and once it was down on tape, it was like, This doesn't actually sound that good.
This little kid pointed at me and said, 'You look disgusting!' That was the first time I thought maybe I did. I decided I'd better start eating. I'm just thankful that I made it through with relatively few scars.
When a man says he is building a house for himself and his posterity, he does not mean to be understood as saying that he has any thought of binding them, nor is it to be inferred that he is so foolish as to imagine that he has any right or power to bind them, to live in it.
No, I just thought of a story and wrote down what I saw. It was about two kids in Ireland who went around killing people. It was called Travelers, and it was made as an independent film.
There have been times when I've been asked to do things and I've thought, 'This is great! This is a great script. But, I do not believe myself in this role.' I pretend I'm the producer and I think, 'If I was making this movie, would I cast myself in this part,' and if that doesn't feel right to me, then I don't even go audition for it.
I grew up on movie sets, so it was something I just found familiar. When I was growing up also, in high school, I would audition for things and my parents let me audition for things - with the thought that I wouldn't get them. And then I would get them... sometimes, and it would surprise them.
I had a brilliant trip to Mexico with my friend Ellie during my gap year. We thought we were being really cool and going off the beaten track while all our friends went to Thailand and Australia. The first beachside bar we walked into - there were two girls from my sixth form in there.
Thanks to postmodernism, we tend to see all facts as meaningless trivia, no one more vital than any other. Yet this disregard for facts qua facts is intellectually crippling. Facts are the raw material of thought, and the knowledge of significant facts makes sophisticated thought possible.
In high school, a teacher once suggested that I be a math major in college. I thought, 'Me? You've got to be joking!' I mean, in junior high, I used to come home and cry because I was so afraid of my math homework. Seriously, I was terrified of math.
I never in my wildest dreams thought that I'd have merchandise selling on a web site. It's just amazing to me.
As a writer, you get to play, you get alter time, you get to come up with the smart lines and the clever comebacks you wish you'd thought of.
The Dalai Lama was once asked for his favorite chant, and he said it was better not to have a favorite anything, which I think is a great thought.
I had never thought of myself as a director and found out that I was not. I am a writer who was able to direct the films that I write.
I was supposed to go to drama school and then go to New York and do theatre. But I grew up on all those fabulous movies and had read all the bold Hollywood books, and I thought I just had to take a look.
