I used to feel that I had to be dictatorial in order to be respected, but after I did a couple of TV movies, I began to see that authority came with the job. So I began to relax and let more people into the process, and my work really improved.

The hardest thing which I've experienced is calling up my father, Rance Howard, who's a wonderful actor, and telling him I've had to cut him out of the movie, which I've had to do twice. That's a lump-in-the-throat phone call.

Richard Dreyfuss, when we were doing 'American Graffiti,' was pumping me to vote for McGovern. But I think I wound up going for Nixon. I thought he could get us out of the Vietnam War quickly. Ha.

I always think of the good comebacks on the car ride home.

With 'Apollo 13,' I wasn't sure the genre would work, because space films hadn't done that well.

What I love about DVD is that the quality is good.

Television, particularly as it becomes more and more serialised, comedies no longer have to tie the stories up neatly within 20-plus minutes. 'Arrested Development' had evolving storylines, as did both versions of 'The Office.' We're seeing that more and more. That allows it to be really, whatever the tone, almost literary.

Unlike the twisters he famously chased in the movies, Bill Paxton was the kind of force of nature you ran toward and never away from.

Instead of candidates hiring people, like yours truly, to create campaign media that works on both conscious and subconscious levels to sway the voting public, what if all TV ads were, by law, only allowed to feature the candidate, with, say, the American flag as the backdrop, alone, speaking directly to the camera?

Nina Gold is a fantastic casting director. She's doing the new 'Star Wars' movies, but she also does 'Game of Thrones' and many of the Working Title movies, and she did 'Rush.'

I think it gets overused and tossed around in ways that aren't true. Every impressive achievement is not genius.

I don't think there is a single character in 'The Graduate' that is not a phony, to one degree or another, except Benjamin and Elaine, and only in the scenes when they are alone together.

Even when you're 22 and you feel immortal, you know in your heart you're not.

I'm lucky in a lot of ways. And in my family life, my home life, is where I count myself the luckiest.

I never wanted to be a brand director. I didn't want that kind of stamp. I wanted to be more like Pacino or Dustin Hoffman or Meryl Streep or De Niro - you know, a chameleon as a storyteller - because I love all kinds of movies.

I have very close friends who are very devout Catholics, and I talked to them before the 'Da Vinci Code,' and it was very difficult for them, but I talked to them before 'Angels and Demons,' and they said the scandal, abuse of power and violence was part of church history, which you can read about in the Vatican bookstore.

If I had to choose between a great acting job and a good directing job, I'd choose the directing job.

There was a combination of shyness and just fear of looking stupid that kept me out of a lot of interesting creative conversations that I could have had at an early age.

Can you imagine the first time they figured out how to mechanically raise somebody up through the stage and make them appear, or drop them down on a rope or a wire? It blew everybody's minds, I'm sure.

I've been around the 'Star Wars' universe from the beginning.

One of the big surprises for me about Einstein was... that he wasn't this big introvert; he was more like a novelist or a painter. It's amazing how close society came to not benefiting from Albert Einstein's genius.

A scene, a day of shooting, can often make you feel kind of stupid and inept because your one job is to anticipate and react and know what to go for.

I don't choose something unless I think I have a personal understanding and something I can offer. It's not always thematic. I wanted to do 'The Grinch' because I wanted to direct Jim Carrey creating that kind of comic fantasy character live. I just thought that would be a mind-blowing experience, and it creatively was.

I've been around a lot of artists who are also good at business, and... one minute they'll sound like an artist, and the next minute, they'll sound like the characters in 'Mad Men.' Jay-Z's a very good businessman, and he talks about it and enjoys it, but he doesn't shift.

I developed a theory that, in many ways, the early 'Andy Griffith' episodes especially were an awful lot like a Capra movie. They were a lot like 'Mr. Deeds' or a lot like 'It's a Wonderful Life' in tone and presentation.

I can't say that I am a DVD junkie. I see most films that I want to see in the theater, and so most of my DVD-watching is catching up with the occasional movies that I missed or revisiting a film that I really care about, in which case I really want the extra channels, because it's a movie that I already love, and I want to know more about it.

I really liked the 'Pitch Black' DVD, and I liked the commentary.

If you're not out there taking some risks, if you're just coasting along with your wins, then you're not really trying.

When I realized that my big dream was going to come true - 'Night Shift' was a success, 'Splash' was a success, I got the job to do 'Cocoon' - suddenly, I was underway. And I knew my name was rising up the lists. I was going to have a career. I was going to be able to direct movies until I screwed it up.

I'd say that 'In the Heart of the Sea' is the most challenging movie I've made. It was tough to figure out how to lead this large cast into some very sensitive, intense, emotional scenes.

Being a president is an impossible job - it's naive to think someone can do the job and not bend the law here and there.

Let me be clear: neither I nor 'Angels & Demons' are anti-Catholic.

You can't expect perfection. It is important to sort of acknowledge some of our imperfections. I write them down. There's something about acknowledging mistakes and being able to put them down on paper; they become facts of your life that you must live with. And then, hopefully, you can navigate the road a little bit better.

I love all kinds of stories and movies, and I did work hard to get through to the creative community and studio executives that I could work in a number of different genres and tones.

Nobody can compare themselves to what The Beatles went through. It was wild.

The regrets I have are strong enough that I wouldn't share 'em. I think that you can't live without suffering some.

It's hard to define change in oneself unless something really dramatic happens, like you give up some vice, fall in love, or something like that.

I think there's a tendency with actor/directors to imagine themselves playing every part and trying to get people to follow their rhythm, their tempo, their pace. I've learned now to just love being at the center of this creative swirl.

Everything's always about page-turning, right? What's next? So, if you create questions for audiences, then they'll want to know the answer. Or they begin to formulate possible outcomes. That's the game we play when we're hearing a story unfold. That's part of what sucks us into a movie.

We're all constantly keeping score. You can't help it. But trying to pit ourselves against other people in some measurable way is largely a waste of time.

Once or twice in the height of 'Happy Days' excitement, which had more to do with Henry Winkler as The Fonz than ever had to do with me, we were kind of like a boy band for a year or so, and we would go out on personal appearances and feel the limousine rocking, and the grabbing at your clothes and people trying to steal your cap.

There is something inherently tough about Americans. They will not accept defeat.

My folks met at the University of Oklahoma, in the theater department in the 1940s. They were married touring the country in 'Cinderella' and 'Snow White.' My mother was married in Cinderella's costume; the dwarves were the best men.

My wife and I invest very, very conservatively.

I'm not a caterer. I just have to stay with my creative convictions. At some point, you have to just get past the special-interest groups and do what you're there to do, which is make a movie.

I don't want to only make the movies that studios will greenlight.

When you read about it, you realize that mental illness is so prevalent. People didn't always have the right terms for it, but most families have had a brush with it.

3-D is a truly exciting possibility. Whether that's going to be something that sustains our interest, I'm not certain, but I think it will.

The sooner we become a multi-planet species, the safer the species is, and the stronger the guarantee that we're going to continue to evolve.

We assume that healthy habits are a good idea, but in and of themselves, they are not the reason we're going to be active at age 95 or 100. The body works in more complex ways.