Quotes

[on "The Serpent and the Rainbow"] "Hemingway said that if you were going to sell a book to Hollywood, the way to do it would be to go to Arizona, walk to the border with California, throw the book across and then get back to Tucson and start drinking. I sold the book after being told that Peter Weir would direct the film and that Mel Gibson had been offered millions to play the leading role. I thought it would really be a sort of Year of Living Dangerously movie, something that could have really helped the perception of Haitian culture in this country. Instead, of course, Wes Craven directed. Instead of going to Tucson, I went straight to Borneo."

[advice at a college commencement] The greatest creative challenge is the struggle to be the architect of your own life. So be patient. Do not compromise. And give destiny time to find you.

Every culture has something to say. Other cultures aren't failed attempts at being modern, at being you. Each culture is a unique answer to a fundamental challenge: What does it mean to be human and alive?

My politics run right down the middle of the road. I tire of those who fuel the flames of fear.. It's not about who's right and who's wrong. We have placed values on only what we want to see - and dismissed all of the other possible values as externalities.

[on resource development] There are spaces we will need to transform, simply because we need the resource. And there are certain spaces that should never be touched because of other values that they hold.. To put a copper mine on Todagin Mountain is like drilling for oil in the Sistine Chapel.

The world is not dying. It's not falling apart. It's changing. What young generation has ever come into its own in a world free of peril? I personally believe that pessimism is an indulgence, despair an insult to the imagination. There are wonderfully positive things out there.