There's not one major greatest influence on my career. It would be film and great artists and great imagineers - Jim Henson Walt Disney Charlie Chaplin people who understand the joy of the imagination.
It is the work of fancy to enlarge but of judgment to shorten and contract and therefore this must be as far above the other as judgment is a greater and nobler faculty than fancy or imagination.
'Avatar' is the greatest most comprehensive collection of movie cliches ever assembled but it's put together in a brand new way with a new technology and tremendous imagination making it a true epic and a kind of a milestone.
I still have a photo on my wall of the greatest idol I will ever have in my life and it's myself at eight. Because that's when the forces of imagination have the same value as the real world when they're an instrument of survival: when my mother disappeared and I imagined a mother. That was me at my best.
My greatest strength as a child I realize now was my imagination. While every other kid was reading and writing I had seven whole hours a day to practice my imagination. When do you get that space in your life ever?
I mean yeah I'm sure that Python and the other things have paved the way for a greater understanding of the British sense of humor but I don't think it's all that different than the American sense of humor.
Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources which must be preserved at all cost.
Humor is mankind's greatest blessing.
If we are going to stay a great power and I hope and pray we will we need the truth. We need to know what is going right and we need to know what is going wrong. There is no greater time than now.
I never make a movie for awards consideration. I will use the hope of getting an Academy Award a) to honor the people who work so hard and also b) it's the greatest Good Housekeeping seal in the world. It's the greatest brand. It's as good as Louis Vuitton and Dior in the world of moviemaking. It's the Super Bowl.