EDWARD NORTON

I never think that a film should answer questions for you. I think it should make you ask a lot of questions.

When I'm the one who sits down and looks at the blank page and writes it out all the way, then I'll call it my script.

I think a lot of people in their average day actually imagine two sides of a conversation at one point or another. I think that the mental trick of holding two sides of a conversation in your head is actually something that we all do.

People wrestle sometimes making movies, and I think that conflict is a very essential thing. I think a lot of very happy productions have produced a lot of very banal movies.

Everyone keeps saying the western's dead, but it's not.

I always felt that acting was an escape, like having the secret key to every door and permission to go into any realm and soak it up. I enjoy that free pass.

It's nice when someone knows their lines.

Just because you've made a couple movies, you've done some good movies, you've been nominated for some Academy Awards, whatever, nobody's entitled. It's a business. If they don't see it, I can think they're wrong, but I'm not entitled to a $15 million budget to make a film.

The period western doesn't have a lot to say to most people today.

I don't flatter myself - I'm not a scientist, I'm not a conservation expert.

It's better for people to miss you than to have seen too much of you.

I just like working with smart people.

I grew up on the golden age of children's TV.

The film industry needs to confront the physical footprint of the way films get made.

I read a lot of scripts and so many are clearly a knockoff of one familiar genre or another.

If I ever have to stop taking the subway, I'm gonna have a heart attack.

I remember as a kid having the offer of a scholarship, that it was going to be like going to Mars, and deciding to stay in my public school.

Life, like poker has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced.

You can't control everything that comes to you.

When you're working on a creative thing, everyone has an idea, and they're pushing it. The first time you work with anybody, you have to get comfortable with the way another person pushes hard for what they want.

Instead of telling the world what you're eating for breakfast, you can use social networking to do something that's meaningful.

I like making movies for myself and my friends and people with my sensibility.

I've always thought of acting as more of an exercise in empathy, which is not to be confused with sympathy. You're trying to get inside a certain emotional reality or motivational reality and try to figure out what that's about so you can represent it.

You never make all things for all people and can't always pander to the broadest denominator. I keep an eye toward doing the themes that interest me. Do they move me? Interest me? Make me think? When I run across something that is provocative in an unsettling way, it appeals to me.

I get heartbroken flying into L.A. It's just this feeling of unspecific loss. Can you imagine what the San Fernando Valley was when it was all wheat fields? Can you imagine what John Steinbeck saw?