Film schools didn't exist when I was growing up. I learned by working with clever people. Good writers and cinematographers.

This black hole that people talk about in my career in the '70s, when I didn't make any films - in retrospect, what I was doing was learning my job.

As a director, my job is to protect. I protect scripts, actors, cameramen, designers.

I've always found poverty a source of strength.

Today I still feel like the most illiterate person ever to have roamed the campuses of Wellesley and Harvard, where I later transferred. I remain intimidated by all the books I haven't read, but over the years I've come to realize that being a student is a lifelong adventure.

I desperately want a dog, but I've been told I travel too much, and I'm not allowed to have a dog.

Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.

When I go back to Texas, I travel the state, and I see people all the time who come up to me, men and women across Texas, and they grab me by the shoulder, and they're afraid. They say, 'Ted, you know, I just lost my health insurance. I got a child with diabetes. I'm scared. Please stop this from happening.'