256 Quotes by Edward Norton

The more you do your homework, the more you're free to be intuitive. But you've got to put the work in.

If two people are at completely different stages in their spiritual life, that can present a real problem.

I come from a family of conservation activists, and so I've had a strong connection to nature all my life. My father has been a leader within the movement for over thirty years and has taught most of what I know about environmental conservation. While he would always take me hiking, camping, and rafting, he also taught me that the spiritual value of the outdoors alone is not enough to save nature against economic interests.

David Fincher is probably the best comprehensive director in terms of being a manger of a process that must drive forward. He has such confident command of cinema language and visual language and script and performance. He knows more about f-stops than any cameraman, he knows more about lighting than any gaffer, he is a wonderful writer, and he can give you a good line reading. Under pressure, he is the kind of guy who you will just dive in with and trust and follow because his vision is so intense.

I've observed over and over that people seem to get a much deeper sense of fulfillment out of something they've done as an act of service than out of the things they do for themselves.

What has always been most interesting about acting to me personally is that it affords you the chance to shift gears, both in terms of the experiences you get to have through doing it, but also the different kinds of things you get to represent.

Life, like poker, has an element of risk. It shouldn't be avoided. It should be faced.

I think one of the most important investments an organization like TNC [The Nature Conservancy] can make is in helping build local capacity - supporting the growth of a global network of small community-based entities. Help people who live within critical ecosystems help themselves and their neighbors to design a better future relationship between themselves and their natural resources.

Lewis and Clark's expedition is as great a story as you could ever hope to tell, and like so many people, Brad and I have both been drawn to it for years, ... We both always agreed that compressing that story into a feature-length film ruined the spirit of it ... so we sat down and said, 'How can we really do this justice?'