I am always stimulated by people. Almost never by ideas.
Putting my audience to sleep isn't what I'm going for.
It's always enjoyable talking with someone who has a very well-functioning, reasoning mind.
At Oxford one was positively encouraged to take wine during tutorials. The tongue must be untied.
I think you kind of hope for people to gush over movies, but I think the opposite way is great sometimes, too. I'd rather have a movie that you're angry about and that you're talking about the next day, than something you forget about when the popcorn goes into the trash.
To be interesting, one has to provoke.
Your wit makes others witty.
I use language to pierce the brain. If I spoke like everybody else spoke, it would just dull everything.
You can't really tell what the audience wants but you can tell what will keep everybodies attention in the same place.
The value of a story isn't that it just has a narcotic effect. It's that it awakens something in you that makes you want to think, that makes you talk to other people, that stirs something that makes you examine the story that eventually turns into self-examination.
I like talking and walking. It's more productive than doing just one.
I think that when a film does its job, it poses questions rather than gives answers. It should act as a frustrating counselor who, at your bidding for advice, says, 'What do you think?' I think that's some of what the culture critic Greg Tate meant by art leaving a 'metaphysical stain.'
You can't get so serious as to not realize that what we do is entertainment, but when you have the chance to provoke thought or advance discussion on a topic, it's just the icing on the cake.
Challenging is good, like good conversation, yes? Who wants to have dinner with the same old easy listening music sounding friends all the time?
To me, art's highest purpose is to entertain, to enlighten, to inspire, to evoke emotion and to change an audience in some way, big or small.
I like to make people think a little bit.
I love arguing with you, Claire. You always surprise me. And occasionally, you even make sense.
What a delightful thing is the conversation of specialists! One understands absolutely nothing and it's charming.
Nothing is so perfectly amusing as a total change of ideas.
Maybe the first secret is, 'Don't bore people.'
Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.
I want someone to laugh with me, someone to be grave with me, someone to please me and help my discrimination with his or her own remark, and at times, no doubt, to admire my acuteness and penetration.
Our sole mission on this show is to make people think, make people feel, and make people happy as much as we can.
The most welcome guest in society will ever be the one to whose mind everything is a suggestion, and whose words suggest something to everybody.
And as a writer, one of the things that I've always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that's what we're supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.
