As filmmakers, we can show where a person's mind goes, as opposed to theater, which is more to sit back and watch it.

Comic books and graphic novels are a great medium. It's incredibly underused.

Turning 30 was when my parents both got cancer and were fighting it and beat it, but their mortality started to get to me. Everything wasn't as hunky-dory like it was.

I had some big ups and downs when I was in my 20s and the one thing I learned was, no matter how low it gets, something good will come along - something always comes out of that dark period.

I think it's important as a filmmaker, as any person working in the arts, that you've got to try new stuff and challenge yourself and take chances.

I couldn't sleep one night and I was sitting in my office and I realized that I was an independent filmmaker.

I'm Godless. I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking

Every film had its own grammar. And it's your job as a director to basically figure out a language to tell a story.

At the end of Requiem all I wanted to do was get a DV camera and just do a small film. But then the hunger comes back.

I hope that Requiem is better than Pi. I hope that Pi is better than my student films, and I'm hoping that I'm getting better as I get older.

Also expressionistic filmmaking - making the audience feel like they were inside the characters' heads. And so we create all these different types of techniques to put the audience there.

I had to philosophize. Otherwise, I could not live in this world.

Never give up hope! If you do, you be dead already.

I am commanding you, as an older and wiser brother, to get over here, get on this caterpillar, and ride to the top of this mushroom with me.

Plant no tree sooner than the vine.

Journalism can never be silent: that is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault.

If it sells, it sells. If it doesn't sell, I'll go make a movie.

The administration's attempt to keep us from selling agricultural products to Cuba is an outrage. Cuba is not a threat. That is why we must do more to open Cuba - not less.

We all used to collect baseball cards that came with bubble gum. You could never get the smell of gum off your cards, but you kept your Yankees cards pristine.

Blessed is he who devotes his life to great and noble ends, and who forms his well-considered plans with deliberate wisdom.

If I didn't want to work for a couple of years I wouldn't have to - it's a great feeling, to know I'm doing it because I want to do it.