I'd be more frightened by not using whatever abilities I'd been given. I'd be more frightened by procrastination and laziness.

As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It's a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.

The last few years I've been saying I was ready to quit. It wasn't that interesting to me. Now that I'm directing, it's all new again.

No idleness, no laziness, no procrastination; never put off till tomorrow what you can do today

Michelle Pfeiffer hasn't been finding a lot of work recently because she doesn't like what a woman her age is offered. That's a real double standard. You get Sean Connery, who gets older and older, still playing opposite young ladies, but it doesn't work the other way around.

Procrastination: Hard work often pays off after time, but laziness always pays off now