Edward Norton Quotes

I do subscribe to the maxim that generally comedy is like jazz. Either you get it or you don't. You can't learn it and you can't be taught it. I don't think that if you are not a funny person, you can fake it.

Look, you've got a generation of people coming along who are going to form their own new relationship with the idea of supporting the causes that they care about or changing the world. And these people are not going to do it the way our parents do it.

I think that the environmental movement is wisely moving away from a largely emotion-based argument for the spiritual or intrinsic value of Nature with a capital "N" and evolving toward a very hard-nosed case for the economic value of natural capital, ecosystem services, biodiversity, etc.

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.

The Zionist Tulsa Jew who's pugnacious is a reality. I grew up around it. And I think it's really, really funny and surprising and unlikely.

I like to get into a lot of things besides movies. I've been very involved with a few specific efforts. We built this park in New York and it's been a very successful project.I worked on a conservation project in East Africa. Too much of this type of stuff can get you wrapped up in your own work and I love it.

I've observed over and over that people seem to get a much deeper sense of fulfillment out of something they've done as an act of service than out of the things they do for themselves.

Making really great music, making really great films, writing great books is an antidote to all of that. And, as people, as artists, some of the massive disruption that technology is causing is so exciting, the way that people can share creativity now.

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.

Any questions I had about whether a redneck from Oklahoma could become a Brown Classical Philosophy professor ended when I met Tim [Blake Nelson].

Anybody who is running a marathon or doing a walkathon, doing a fundraiser for their school, their company, by far it's guaranteed the easiest and most fun way to quickly set up a fundraising campaign and send it around to your friends and family.

I don't get much out of doing a red carpet.

Practiced poorly, tourism can be extremely negative.

You can do things in twin scenes now you couldn't before. You can implement actual moving cameras.

On the downside, to paraphrase Thom Yorke talking about the music business, we're still having to deal with the stench of the last fart of the dying corpse of this regressive vision that America is a white, middle-aged, male, conservative country.

Suspension of disbelief and that whole question is part of the heart of the 'Leaves of Grass'movie.

Sometimes their oppression of emotion and the weird way it comes out is more interesting than painting it in bold primary colors.

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

You always end up getting involved in things because of, you know, the strange things your life brings you into contact with.

Basically, I think 21st century conservation is moving toward preserving ecosystems by dealing with the needs of people.

When people come together too young, they try to become one person. As you get older, you realize that you don't want to become one person because then you lose the person you are.

Obviously plastics have served very important purposes and been incredibly convenient but as we begin to witness the long-term consequences of the chemical components leaching into our water and our bodies, we're going to be forced to look for alternatives to how we package goods and food.

The deeper you go with the character, the more you see the layers start to peel away. It's more challenging to me, but it's also just interesting. Those are the things I like to watch. I like to watch the evolutions of something.

I think one of the most important investments an organization like TNC [The Nature Conservancy] can make is in helping build local capacity - supporting the growth of a global network of small community-based entities. Help people who live within critical ecosystems help themselves and their neighbors to design a better future relationship between themselves and their natural resources.

David Fincher is probably the best comprehensive director in terms of being a manger of a process that must drive forward. He has such confident command of cinema language and visual language and script and performance. He knows more about f-stops than any cameraman, he knows more about lighting than any gaffer, he is a wonderful writer, and he can give you a good line reading. Under pressure, he is the kind of guy who you will just dive in with and trust and follow because his vision is so intense.

At this point in my life I'm not bent on proving anything, really.

Remarkably, there's no green screen in 'Leaves of Grass' movie. There is motion control. Technically, there were all sorts of challenges, but really the soul of it is Edward Norton talent. You write these characters when you write a movie, and all you can hope for or depend on is that your actors will elevate the material.

If you try to make interesting films, you're going to be disappointed most of the time. I choose just not to look at it that way.

Most people don't relate to and can't generate concern for something they don't encounter personally or feel personally affected by. People have to have the palpable negatives in their lives dissected for them in ways that let them understand the root causes of unhealthy, unhappy conditions in their lives and then be allowed to really see and feel the positive alternatives.

I had a huge advantage with Edward Norton because he's directed a movie before, so one thing he appreciates is how hard my job is, he's very sensitive to that. We actually ended up finishing "Leaves of Grass" a day early.

I'd say that, in addition to actually taking my brother and sister and I camping and hiking and river rafting all our lives and introducing us to the power of natural landscapes, his [my father's] biggest impact on my thinking has been to always argue that the "spiritual case for Nature" was not going to outweigh the needs of 7 billion people and to insist that law, science and economics were the critical frameworks through which we had to defend the value of nature.

This place [USA] is exploding with young people who are - they're like Nietzsche's hammer - going to break everything and make something better. The creative energy in this country, and what people are coming up with is very hopeful.

Most of us still believe in the intrinsic value of nature, but I think the first century of the environmental/conservation movement demonstrated pretty clearly that this value cannot compel a civilization-wide shift toward sustainable behavior and enterprise when stacked up against the urgent economic and social needs of 7 billion people, most of whom are struggling to get out of poverty.

People say you can't make movies about your politics or the environment. And, generally speaking, I completely divide those sides of my brain.

The incentive for business is not, and cannot, be anything other than the root incentive for all business: they must profit.

When the tides of life turn against you
And the current upsets your boat,
Don't waste those tears on what might have been,
Just lie on your back and float.

Fame is very corrosive and you have to guard very strictly against it.

I think the consensus among our generation and people younger than us is that we do have a defining challenge in the moment, so I do like being involved in something bigger than the finger-doodling I do in art. It stimulates your brain in certain ways.

If Nick Broomfield never found anyone with affection for Courtney Love, it's only because he conspicuously avoided the countless friends, colleagues and fans who appreciate her talent and admire her as a person. But then, why would Broomfield have opened up his film to those of us who work with Courtney and are close to her when there are so many bitter left - behinds and desperate attention - seekers eager to validate his attack on her character? Inquisitors in every age, scared of forceful women, have used all kinds of half - baked testimony to whip up chants of 'Burn the witch!'

A lot of why I do something is just the novelty of the experience.

I think there is a serious corruption in the idea sold through advertising that you can attain spiritual peace through lifestyle and the notion of building your happiness from the outside-in by acquiring things ... which if you think about it, is the essence of advertising

I studied French forever, and when do I ever speak French? I clearly should have studied Spanish. I wish I had stuck with music, because that would still be great. I really wish I had learned to surf earlier in my life.

I'm a Tulsa Jew and I have a religious upbringing.

With Edward Norton you'd never say, "This is the one we're going with whether you like it or not." It has to be agreed upon.

See, I don't get the sense that you need to direct at all. Sometimes I get the opposite sensation from you, that you're like, "I really should go do something else." But then you are drawn back in by a particular story, like a hangnail in the brain.

Most of what I know about environmental conservation I learned from my father, who has been a leader within the movement for over 30 years.

It's nice when someone knows their lines.

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

Even my wife and two of my children are in "Leaves of Grass". Because I love the source material so much, it was really easy to write and an utter delight to get to direct because I had people like Edward [Norton] elevating the material and surprising me in their interpretations of all of this stuff that's so close to me.

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

I just like working with smart people.

Screenplays aren't written to be read, they're written to be made into movies.

I almost forgot what it's like to be proud of my government.

I'm not particularly precious about the theatrical experience any more.

There is a lot of interesting product coming to market already. Bags and bottles and cups and such made of potato starch and other fully biodegradable materials. In some sense, plastic is more chemically complex. We ought to be able to simplify.

If there's a criteria that really gets me interested in a work besides any type of personal interaction with the theme, it's if I feel like this is the right piece of work for that director at that moment in their career.

It must be good to be in Germany and France, because I have completely forgotten what it is like to be proud of your government.

As we say in the sewer, time and tide wait for no man.

I've never acted before in a movie I've directed. This felt like the time to do it just because the " Leaves of Grass" movie itself is so much of a platform for the lead actor. It's really written for an exciting performance and it really depends on the audience watching an extraordinary actor having a great time pulling off this feat. It makes sense to me as a director to act in support of that.

You can't control everything that comes to you.

But look at Avatar [2009], one of the most globally viewed pieces of entertainment to have ever been made - the central emotional event of the whole movie was a tree being cut down. And the entire movie, essentially, is saying, "If we let the military industrial complex trash the place that we're living in, we will have committed an epic crime."

I've always liked the idea of taking old dramatic ideas and devices and making them feel relevant or contemporary or whatever.

I just love movies.

Sometimes creativity is a compulsion, not an ambition.

To me, Fight Club was a comedy. When [David] Fincher sent me the book and I read it, the first thing I asked him was, "This is a comedy, right?" he said, "Yeah, that's the whole point," and I said, "Okay, I'm in." I certainly wasn't imagining myself as a dramatic actor when I was running around in my underwear in that film.

Most of the films that I've ever really responded to are ones that I feel were really involved in their times.

My greatest hope is that we transcend the most fearful thing, which is that we are rapidly degrading the ecological systems on this planet that support everything we are doing and all life on it.

There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there.

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.

I tend to relate to a character in terms of the arc: what's interesting is where he starts versus where he ends up.

Young people know how to use these social networking tools, and they know how to use them effectively.

Every little thing that people know about you as a person impedes your ability to achieve that kind of terrific suspension of disbelief that happens when an audience goes with an actor and character he's playing.

It's ginned up by the corporate plutocracy as a way of distracting the working-class people that it's screwing. We hamstring our own natural progressivism in this country, and that's really stupid.

To me, achieving tone, achieving consistency, is exactly the job of a director. It is to be the fusing, the nexus of a whole bunch of people contributing to the complex life of a movie. There are actors, there's a cinematographer, there're costume people, set people, there are all these things, and you somehow have to be the person in the middle of it who is making it all synchronize into the same magic bubble.

I don't feel insecure about any of this work anymore. Maybe I don't have what I had when I was younger. I'm not really hungry to prove anything to anybody, really. But when I stand outside myself and observe what I think are my strengths and weaknesses going into directing, it's what you just said, an affliction to organize moments.

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.

Well, I don't feel that I've played so many bad guys, and I'm rot really drawn to villains per se. I think a lot of people relate to some of my characters' inner struggles.

People think because I went to Yale that that implies privilege, and it is a privilege in the sense that it's an incredible opportunity.

I don't think you should sit around and wait for people to give you an opportunity to express yourself or do your work, or whatever. Actors have to be producers and writers have to be producers.

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

I start to get fixated on a story and a character and an idea, and at a certain point, I really want to do it. It's a compulsion to explore a specific thing, as opposed to a compulsion to direct, generally speaking.

People are worried about the degree to which corporate interest is starting to threaten human interest.

I've already spent a lot of my life doing what makes me go. There's a life out there while I'm still young, able to move, able to just sit at peace in the water - I should be spending much more time doing that, rather than continuing to go through this artistic struggle.

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?

The best films of any kind, narrative or documentary, provoke questions.

All people are paradoxical. No one is easily reducible, so I like characters who have contradictory impulses or shades of ambiguity. It's fun, and it's fun because it's hard.

You know, independent films have been institutionalized, practically. Every studio has got a boutique arthouse label.

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

The people who work in the scientific field, they need help to convey what it's about.

The more you can create that magic bubble, that suspension of disbelief, for a while, the better.

You dream as an actor's director of letting moments breathe through two-shots.

If I'm trying to put size on for a role, then I don't do much running.

It's a dream to be in a company of actors.

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

When you have a pipe salesman with a business called Macabee Pipes, I'd say you've got your tongue planted firmly in your cheek.

As we say in the sewer, if you're not prepared to go all the way, don't put your boots on in the first place.

I'm a New Yorker, you know.

Sometimes we don't see certain things until we're ready to see them in a certain way.

I think technology is having a democratising effect on film.