I play for a living...Success is tied to a feeling of magic, which I can protect. My hope is we broke so many rules we created a new rule. The idea is to always go for the thing that's risky. I want to be courageous and original. And original means, you don't know what 'colour' movie you just saw. Movie making is not like other artforms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be disgested or interpreted... It takes two years to make each one of these, and it's always judged on money. "All of my movies have made money, and that's important for me - it's my job to make money for the studio..." That's the way stories come to me, they come to me very naturally like that. If this was a story about me and someone else, I would be withholding information about them immediately. The negative thing about the twist is that it's all people are occupied with; all the gentleness in the movie is being overshadowed by the flashy cousin in the sequined vest taking centre-stage. [on surprise endings] When you say fear of the unknown, that is the definition of fear; fear is the unknown, fear is what you do not know, and it's genetically within us so that we feel safe. We feel scared of the woods because we're not familiar with it, and that keeps you safe. "I have this whole picture of the film in my head and then I put it all down on paper and storyboard it; showing the movie shot by shot. I like to feel that I have thought of everything before the camera starts rolling but I think that's probably my asset and weakness as a film maker. I am giving my cast a target that I have in my mind and they are trying to hit it. It's positive because I know exactly what I want to get out of my actors and the scene. But the negative is that I might not catch the lightning in the bottle, I may not get that unexpected improvised brilliance." "I think I take what you might call a B-movie story, deal with B-movie subjects, and I treat it as if it's an A-movie in terms of my approach, my crew, my actors, my ethics and so on. I guess that's my trademark or one of them anyway!" "I'm going to stop making movies if they end the cinema experience. If there's a last film that's released only theatrically, it'll have my name on it. This is life or death to me. If you tell audiences there's no difference between a theatrical experience and a DVD, then that's it, game's over, and that whole art form is going to go away slowly. Movies will end up being this esoteric art form, where only singular people will put films out in a small group of theaters." "You get in my corner, you're going to get pummeled." "It's human nature. Twenty-six people love the movie, and the 27th person hates it, and the only thing you can think about is the 27th person." (on critics) "I am fully aware of the giant risk I'm taking. Being as eccentric as my mind will let me and then hearing people's responses. This requires an incredible amount of pain. Everyone around me, 98%, at some point doubted." "If you're not betting on me, then nobody should get money. I've made profit a mathematical certainty. I'm the safest bet you got." "Except for Pixar, I have made the four most successful original movies in a row of all time."