I consider music to be storytelling, melody and rhythm. A lot of hip-hop has broken music down. There are no instruments and no songwriting. So you're left with just storytelling and rhythm. And the storytelling can be so braggadocious, you're just left with rhythm.

I am not against songs in films. We come from an oral tradition of storytelling. I have grown up listening to epics in oral rendition and oral rendition always had music.

The storytelling in country music is so powerful.

I'm always going to be able to touch fans and get new fans because everybody goes through something everyday. I just keep touching different subjects by talking to the streets and reaching out to my fans by telling them a story instead of just giving them music to listen.

Every player, when you get released, you feel like you still have a lot to offer. And that team is telling you, 'No, you don't have a lot to offer, so we're moving on.'

Minimalism seems closest to the sophisticated storytelling of movies. Movies have really educated contemporary audiences to be the most intelligent, sophisticated audiences in history. We don't any longer need to have the relationship between one scene and the next explained. We will figure it out ourselves.

First, speaking for myself, I don't want to ever be in a position where I'm telling other directors how to make movies, because I don't think it's any of my business.

By the time I got to the point where I was 'starring' in movies, and I had executives telling me what lines to say, that wasn't for me. I'm really not an actor. I'm a guy who comes out of comedy, and my impetus was always to rewrite the line to make it funnier, not to try to make somebody's precious words work.

I like human stories. I like stories about situations we can relate to. I like movies like 'Ordinary People' or 'Terms of Endearment.' Mothers and daughters, fathers and sons, boyfriends, girlfriends. The stories to me that are worth telling are almost simple ones, but very relatable.

I've always known that I'll have a career for the rest of my life because they'll always make movies about men, and men need women in their lives. But, when it comes to telling a woman's story, they're complex, circular, and not genre-driven.

I praise CBS for taking a risk, which is always the price you pay for opportunity. This is not standard movie of the week storytelling. I think movies of the week have fallen into a niche and that isn't my niche.

I hate dream sequences in movies and T.V. shows generally for their heavy-handed symbolism and storytelling tediousness.

I always loved silent movies. I was not a specialist, but I loved them. And when I started directing, I became really fascinated by the format - how it works, the device of the silent movie. It's not the same form of expression as a talkie. The lack of sounds makes you participate in the storytelling.

So I like to try to go back and develop pure visual storytelling. Because to me, it's one of the most exciting aspects of making movies and almost a lost art at this point.

If you're sitting in your minivan, playing your computer animated films for your children in the back seat, is it the animation that's entertaining you as you drive and listen? No, it's the storytelling. That's why we put so much importance on story. No amount of great animation will save a bad story.

If I could eat whatever I wanted every day, I would have Domino's pizza with pasta carbonara inside every slice. And at night, I would have Neapolitan ice cream until I felt absolutely toxic. And then I would drift off telling myself, 'It's going to be O.K... It's going to be O.K. you're going to train in the morning.'

I'm not a writer because I want to make money. I'm a writer because I'm a very slow thinker, but I do care about thinking, and the only way I know how to think with any kind of finesse is by telling stories.

Now, people when I say that look at me and say, 'What are you talking about, Joe? You're telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?'. The answer is yes, that's what I'm telling you.

When you first get opportunities, suddenly you get surrounded by a lot of people who want to make money off you but also are there to help. But they start telling you so much what you need to be and what you need to do to maintain some idea of career maintenance.

My mom choreographed the top Olympians; she's really the queen of ice in her world, so I kind of get my directorial bug from her because she's really good at telling people what to do!

On signing day, my mom brought me the national letter of intent to Arkansas. I should feel like I'm making the right decision. You get that many people telling you that. I had been dreaming about it. I signed 'No' where I was supposed to sign my name and put an exclamation point.

My mom was a ventriloquist and she always was throwing her voice. For ten years I thought the dog was telling me to kill my father.

My mom has always been beside me, always telling me what's right and what's not, guiding me through it all, keeping me away from bad company and from bad habits.

I went to see 'Phantom of the Opera' with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music... Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time - the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music.