Belgrade has kind of a Dublinesque, dear-dirty charm.

My favorite sci-fi always uses its hook to amplify some bigger theme or idea - some emotional thrust.

Much of directing [a movie] is not directing but just listening and being present in the moment and just keeping your eyes open.

If you make something interesting, inevitably not everybody is going to like it.

You go from these high hopes when you're writing to just a desperate want of not making a complete fool of yourself by the end of it.

All my favorite movies are somebody else's least favorite movie.

You come out of each movie just thinking, "God, if we can fool them into letting us make just one more, we can get it right."

Writing sucks. I think it's terrible. Writing is not fun, and don't trust anyone who claims to enjoy it. Liars!

Writing in a lot of ways feels more like excavation than construction. It feels like you're uncovering this thing bit by bit, discovering what it is, instead of constructing it upwards.

Showing your movie to an audience... it's like your kid doing a piano recital. 'Just let it not fail. Please.

If I spend a year and a half writing a script, the first year will be outlining in notebooks. It's just the way I work, definitely not necessarily the best way.

four geological eras had to pass so that human beings would be able to outsing the birds and die for love.

In our community, we have a duty to strengthen the weakest among us to build a better society.

This is me being sad.Maybe you think I'm being happy in this picture. Really I'm being sad but pretending I'm being happy. I'm doing that because I think people won't like me if I look sad.

I don't smoke, don't drink much, and go to the gym five times a week. I live a healthy lifestyle and feel great. I can run a marathon, you know.

Never break a Muslim's heart by refusing what he offers you, when you know that anything that comes to you through him is in reality from Allah, and he is only His powerless and compelled means.

There is a reason the word belonging has a synonym for want at its center; it is the human condition.

You, ignorant of the way of Love, set Me free.

I just have a sense that Obama's not going to ultimately succeed in totally transforming America into something other than how it was founded.

I wasn't a naturally confident, extravert, outgoing person.

The less the thought of the body, the better. For it is the body that drags us down.