The arts are weapons of understanding and weapons of happiness.

If the arts are held up solely as a means of social insight, fantasy is denied the chance to be commonplace and reality the chance to be exotic.

What we hold in our heads - our memory, our feelings, our thoughts, our sense of our own history - is the sum of our humanity.

Waiters are like actors waiting in the wings, bantering whenever we passed each other on the restaurant floor, shouting at each other backstage in the kitchen and winking and corpsing above the heads of our audience, the unsuspecting customers.

Most of the big money people don't know what would interest an audience if you did it. They only know what interested the audience last time.

I made a movie in Germany called 'The Chambermaid' - it was very, very small. I think it cost €70,000 to make. I even put some money in and raised some money for it. It was real German arthouse... It goes, somehow, out there on the Internet, and it goes on iTunes."

People's financial situation has changed, and they surrender their cats all the time, because they're downsizing or moving to a property where they are not allowed to have pets.

I don't know if it's the sunshine, or the fact that I actually have a job, but I do like L.A. a lot. In New York, it can be gray and rainy and cold, and you still don't have any money, and you feel like a bad Dickens character.