The best sounds a kid will get is in a movie theater, with huge speakers, turned up loud. I always mix my music really loud. I don't care if you don't hear all the dialogue. The audience are not idiots.

It's like being at the kids' table at Thanksgiving - you can put your elbows on it, you don't have to talk politics... no matter how old I get, there's always a part of me that's sitting there.

When I did 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off', I had the idea on Monday and the following Tuesday it was in budget at Paramount. I couldn't walk.

I always preferred to hang out with the outcasts, 'cause they were cooler; they had better taste in music, for one thing, I guess because they had more time to develop one with the lack of social interaction they had!

A nerd will be a nerd all his life.

Why watch someone kissing when people really close their eyes when they kiss?

At the time I came along, Hollywood's idea of teen movies meant there had to be a lot of nudity, usually involving boys in pursuit of sex, and pretty gross overall. Either that or a horror movie. And the last thing Hollywood wanted in their teen movies was teenagers!

My heroes were Dylan, John Lennon and Picasso, because they each moved their particular medium forward, and when they got to the point where they were comfortable, they always moved on.

A geek is a guy who has everything going for him but he's just too young. He's got the software but he doesn't have the hardware yet.

I don't consider myself qualified to do a movie about international intrigue - I seldom leave the country.

I don't think of kids as a lower form of the human species.

I find that screen kissing wears very thin very quickly.

I stumbled into this business, I didn't train for it. I yelled 'Action!' on my first two movies before the camera was turned on.

I usually listen to surf music, not much instrumental music, and when I was younger I listened to jazz.

I was obsessed with romance. When I was in high school, I saw 'Doctor Zhivago' every day from the day it opened until the day it left the theater.

I'm from Chicago, I live in Chicago and I wanted very much for the music in Chicago to succeed.

It's been about ten years since I've worked with actors who knew their lines!

My early prose style - this is so embarrassing - was sort of a suburban, Presbyterian knockoff of Woody Allen.

The only reason I got into movies was because I had no music talent.

When I go to a concert, I can't believe that people pay lots of money to see a band that they obviously like and then they dance the whole time.