Music Interviews

“The journey is everything! It’s a cliché, but I have really felt it in my own life, in the 25 or 30 years I’ve been in this… The goal is the process, really enjoying the process.”

“Happiness for me is just being; just being at any given moment. If you are searching for happiness, you are not happy. It’s the pot at the end of the rainbow.”

“I think it’s really important to not be afraid of failure and to push yourself to try things and jump in the cold water.”

“What I am looking for in this world is a sense of not feeling alone, and that’s one of the greatest gifts you can give to another person. I hope that my work does that. I hope that when people leave the theater they feel less alone.”

“You can catch ideas at a deeper level when you start meditating. Intuition grows, and intuition is the number one tool for an artist – feeling and thinking combined. The ideas are flowing, and the feeling that you can get it to feel correct. You know what that is. It’s a knowingness that grows. It’s really beautiful.”

“During my career I was blessed to be able to constantly be motivated and constantly be pushing myself, because otherwise I never would have achieved what I did.”

“It’s the rollercoaster ride of doing something creative: when it goes well and you enjoy the process then it’s a high and you just want to keep on doing it.”

“I don’t pander to anybody. I don’t care who it is. I just do the picture I do.”

“I’m doing something that I love, and I consider that to be success. But if you think it’s gonna come fast or easy, then you probably are in for some rough times. You need to always be ready to throw things out and do it over again, and know that you love the process enough to be doing it repeatedly. Always be in love with the process and in love with your talent. And know that you’re going to keep doing it because it’s what you love doing.”

“We are consumed with existence, mortgages, jobs, cars, houses. It is nice to allow the imagination room to breathe again and see life as something that is spectacular and magic.”

“Most people make art and movies as a job and if a lot of people go to see it they make money and that is their sign of success. I am not making judgment here, but their goal is strictly business-oriented. I don't do this as a business.”

“I thought for a long time as the business grew, “Is this something I want to do for the rest of my life?” And I knew it was not. When I left Calvin Klein, I had done almost everything I wanted to do in terms of creation of products. And re-doing was less fun.”

“I discovered early on that I’m the kind of person that experiments and makes mistakes but then it’s all worth it because once in a blue moon it hits home.”

“I take everything as seriously as the next thing. I don't differentiate or have a level of commitment based on the kind of project that it is. I believe that there's an equal measure in one role versus another role.”

“I would like to think that someday I will be content enough with myself and feel good enough about myself to think I don’t need to do all that sort of shit and I’ll just go and watch tomatoes grow or something.”

“I dreamed of winning the Olympics since I was nine years old. That was definitely the most memorable race of my career. But the next day I woke up, and I wanted to win the next race.”

“If I pass away one day, I am happy because I tried to do my best. My sport allowed me to do so much.”

“One day, if you have a little bit of talent and a lot of hard work, you’re going to find out who you are.”

“There is something in leaving this place better than where you have left it, working on yourself, doing things with other people, there is something in that that feels right, deep in your core. I go with that.”

“The bottom line in the end is to grab the heart of the audience and talk to them directly and tell them: "I share with you my soul and my heart."”

“It’s still astounding to me that I have one Oscar, let alone two. Especially because it’s by-product of something that you love so much, it feels like that’s already the gift, that’s already the award.”

“I just try to live my life and just be who I am. If people really accept me they have to accept me as I am, you know what I mean? My highs and my lows and my vulnerabilities… It's who I am as a human being.”

“Filmmaking is never anything less than a beautiful gift. I've been doing this forever, and as hard as it may be, it's never let me down. I have such a will to make these movies!”

“There's going to be a moment where your work challenges you, where you’re at your limit… But if that deep love is really there, you're not going to abandon it. You are going to give your all to it!”

“When you keep yourself open, you just might get to know yourself and know the good things about yourself. And that's why I always come back to songwriting. It's the way I kind of try and make sense of my life.”

“The thing I’ve gathered more of over the years is a self-confidence that’s to do with having done work that people have liked.”

“I am very grateful for the films I’ve made. I’ve been able to make movies for $1 million and I’ve been able to make movies for $195 million. I can do what I want in different sizes for different reasons. I have been able to do 10 more movies than I thought I would ever make!”

“I try to look at things more from the perspective that everything is happening for us, not to us. And so whatever challenges that were occurring at the time, perhaps they were happening just so this moment could happen.”

“For the first 20 years in my career all I did was add things; more courses, more silverware, more ingredients, adding, adding, adding. Only like three years ago or so I was able to really start focusing on removing and felt confident to do so. I finally created a dish where for the first time I felt like I achieved what I tried to do for 23 years.”

“It was eye opening and an education really, a masterclass working with Martin Scorsese on Killers of the Flower Moon. That talent! Of course, you are in the presence of a master, working with him.”

“I think at a certain point, you arrive to a kind of maturity that allows you to swim more freely. And when you touch that state, playing with your unconscious, it's very beautiful when you when you experience that moment.”

“I knew what felt instinctively right for me, and I pursued that throughout my entire career. It’s the way I live; it’s the way I work. Everything that I’ve done and everything that I have is an extension of my personal taste.”

“For me, success is having integrity and really staying true to my own voice. When I was younger, maybe it was more about the big spaces and getting awards. But now I’m prioritizing more this idea of having a beautiful process.”

“I think I will stop working when I am finally satisfied… And I cannot see that in the foreseeable future. The urge to do better and even better than that is what pushes me forward.”

“I think for me in my life, the most useful thing that I aspire to be is just being as self-aware and as honest with myself as possible. I think if you’re doing that then probably everything else will follow.”

“I do not consider architecture as art, nor do I consider architects to be artists. However, I do have a strong desire to improve the purity of my expression and put a strong message into my architecture so that I can call it art!”

“If I want to make a movie and I can at 62, I will. But I want to leave the ring triumphant. I want this guy, this guy you see right now, I want him to be the guy who makes the movies, not the autumn dude.”

“I live from my heart. I am not a cerebral person. I will never be. I am 55 years old. I will continue doing things the way I have done them my whole life.”

“I always want to take a human portrait. My goal in life is always to enter into everything with great care and with great humanity.”

“Over the course of my life, I have sacrificed love, private life, and time for me, all on the altar of work. But I have also created an empire that is important for so many.”