Peter Landesman

“Modern art, in particular, seems especially vulnerable to fraud. Its abstractions are sometimes difficult to understand or grasp, and a modern painting is often loved less because of its intrinsic quality - its beauty, as conventionally understood - than because of the identity of the painter, its mark of social status.”

“To me, film is the most complete method of storytelling.”

“There was absolutely zero discourse between me or anybody at the studio with the NFL. None. The only exchange was one-sentence e-mails trying to arrange a meeting, before deciding to cancel the meeting. Period. End of story.”

“I love writing in compressed time periods because the act of survival in the midst of panic and fear, that's where true heroism comes. If you have a uniform, and you're expected to do things, it's a sort of incremental heroism.”

“'Parkland' is not out to pick a fight and start a dialogue about conspiracy.”

“14th- and 15th-century drawings are almost unheard-of - and as a result, they generate jealous desire among dealers and curators. Museums in particular value rarity and pedigree more than attractiveness.”

“When a director is also a writer, everyone on the production looks to him, knowing he gave birth to the idea. There's a different level of viability.”

“Like every other industry or institution, the journalism world is populated by the petty and fearful, in addition to the courageous and brilliant.”

“The itinerary of most antiquities from their source - tomb, temple, quarry - to the shelves of museums or private collectors is murky and often purposely concealed.”

“The village of Polgardi is a dusty roadside settlement northeast of Lake Balaton, a resort area in western Hungary popular with German tourists.”

“Our brains have this habit of quilting dreams from the fabrics of our lives. As a filmmaker, I get to do it for a living.”

“Will Smith is the most successful money-making movie star on planet Earth, in terms of just how many people have gone to see his films, so Will is a guy who gets movies made.”

“Film is probably the medium best suited to reach the most people - the visual, the aural, the limbic, the intellectual: it captures all these parts of our mind and soul. No other art form comes close.”

“Tom Hanks comes with a lot of credibility.”

“Salvador Dali, lying on his deathbed in a stupor, is said to have been fed thousands of sheets of blank paper to sign for fake lithographs.”

“I played football the whole time I was growing up, and through two years of college. I think it's a beautiful game in many respects, one that allows you to follow a player from boyhood through manhood.”

“I don't actually see that much difference between telling stories in journalism and telling them on film. The tools are very different, but the basic idea is the same.”

“Large corporations have the ability to distract people with controversy that just distracts people from what's great about the movie or what works about the movie.”

“The trains that travel the Chunnel are massive machines. The Eurostars are bullet-shaped and a quarter-mile long. They are pulled by a 136,000-pound locomotive and move in the open air at 185 m.p.h. and through the tunnel at 100 m.p.h.”

“One way to test a picture's integrity is to turn it upside down - a technique used not only by connoisseurs but also by artists trying to see their work with a fresh eye.”