Quotes from Gary Ross

I mean, in 'Big' and 'Pleasantville,' it's a journey that the characters go on where I think they come to kind of meet themselves at the end and who they actually are and give full voice to who they actually are. And that, you know, obviously fascinates me for some reason. Maybe I didn't adequately grow up.

There's something so wonderful about writing in rhyme where it isn't just the meaning of the words, it's the music to the words and the shape and the sound.

I mean, what is racism? Racism is a projection of our own fears onto another person. What is sexism? It's our own vulnerability about our potency and masculinity projected as our need to subjugate another person, you know? Fascism, the same thing: People are trying to untidy our state, so I legislate as a way of controlling my environment.

'Dr. Strangelove' was and is one of my favorite movies ever, and I just can't believe they actually blew up the world after that.

Obviously I love 'The Godfather' movies. I think they're phenomenal.

I loved making 'The Hunger Games' - it was the happiest experience of my professional life. Lionsgate was supportive of me in a manner that few directors ever experience in a franchise: they empowered me to make the film I wanted to make and backed the movie in a way that requires no explanation beyond the remarkable results.

You can't tell your kids to read if you're just watching television. They have to see you read. And in that respect, I think it's important to walk the walk. It's a wonderful shared time.

If you look at the opening of 'Private Ryan,' you are so in the point of view of those guys and there is a whole world swirling all around them. You are learning that geography as they are learning it.

There's nothing I'd rather do than sort of, you know, sit at my computer and rhyme.

What works about fairy tales is that they endure, and the great thing about fairy tales is that you can explore big, epic things that you can't really explore in other situations.

I don't understand people who dream in black and white. I just don't get it. My dreams have always been vivid color.

People who want to be a star get their teeth capped. People who want to be an actor get to work.

The great seats of power tend to be wide and open, not vertical and soaring. Red Square, Tiananmen Square, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin - all massive but with large open spaces that project an image of might.

'Pleasantville' seems tonally ambitious, but it can handle a wide breadth of tone because it's so fanciful.

We repress the things we're scared of, but if we just look at and embrace the things we're scared of, it's a much fuller, richer life that's also not as scary.

Most modern science fiction went to school on 'Dune.' Even 'Harry Potter' with its 'boy protagonist who has not yet grown into his destiny' shares a common theme. When I read it for the first time, I felt like I had learned another language, mastered a new culture, adopted a new religion.

The dynamic range of a digital camera is not that much greater than film, particularly if you push the ASA a little bit.

I love 'Chaplin'; I mean I really love 'Chaplin.' I just think there's a grace and an elegance that's almost never been matched.

I think movies do play a valuable role in turning people on to the act of reading. I think that phenomenon just creates readers. At first they're going to love 'Harry Potter,' or they may love 'The Hunger Games,' but after that, they're going to love the act of reading and wonder, 'What else can I read?'

I mean, the wonderful thing about writing a book is that you're getting a finished product at the end of the day. You're communicating directly with the reader.

Despite recent speculation in the media, and after difficult but sincere consideration, I have decided not to direct 'Catching Fire.' As a writer and a director, I simply don't have the time I need to write and prep the movie I would have wanted to make, because of the fixed and tight production schedule.

My '50s were different than other people's '50s. The myth didn't permeate our world, 'Donna Reed' and all that. I longed for that, I wanted to be like other normal families on TV.

As time goes by the memories of sitting on the edge of a bed and reading aloud with your kid are going to be very meaningful in your own mental scrapbook.

As a writer and a director, I simply don't have the time I need to write and prep the movie I would have wanted to make because of the fixed and tight production schedule.