Ron Howard

My wife and I invest very, very conservatively.

If I had to choose between a great acting job and a good directing job, I'd choose the directing job.

Everything's always about page-turning, right? What's next? So, if you create questions for audiences, then they'll want to know the answer. Or they begin to formulate possible outcomes. That's the game we play when we're hearing a story unfold. That's part of what sucks us into a movie.

I didn't really listen to music when I was doing homework or when I - when I work on a script. I tend to drift to NPR and news.

Sometimes there's something very comforting about a film unfolding more or less as you expect it to.

I never saw The Beatles live. I was very aware of them, though.

When 'Apollo 13' appeared as an opportunity and I began to tackle that in as authentic a way as I possibly could, I really became enthralled by the philosophical side of space travel and why we need to explore - what it means to us here on Earth - all of those things. I became a huge proponent.

My obligation is to the movie audiences.

In the research I did for 'Apollo,' there was never a moment's hesitation by anyone that we would do anything other than save these guys, until every resource, every ounce of energy was spent. And I'm very proud of that aspect of our culture.

I think it gets overused and tossed around in ways that aren't true. Every impressive achievement is not genius.

I do really like serio-comic movies that treat real difficulties in a real way.

If you think about it, for almost any moment, any mood that you might be in, there's probably a Beatles song that will address that mood, that feeling, that set of emotions. I don't know that that can be said about very many groups, if any.

There was a combination of shyness and just fear of looking stupid that kept me out of a lot of interesting creative conversations that I could have had at an early age.

I've been around a lot of artists who are also good at business, and... one minute they'll sound like an artist, and the next minute, they'll sound like the characters in 'Mad Men.' Jay-Z's a very good businessman, and he talks about it and enjoys it, but he doesn't shift.

There is something inherently tough about Americans. They will not accept defeat.

We're all constantly keeping score. You can't help it. But trying to pit ourselves against other people in some measurable way is largely a waste of time.

Being a president is an impossible job - it's naive to think someone can do the job and not bend the law here and there.

I really feel like you shouldn't make a movie as a kind of exercise. You have to be all the way in.

If you're not out there taking some risks, if you're just coasting along with your wins, then you're not really trying.

Anytime you really take a close look at people who are dealing with the aging process, you're going to have a complicated reaction to what you're seeing and feeling. If you're in the middle of it, those emotions are going to be quadrupled. It's immediate, it's relatable, so it's good human drama.