I am an unusual Irishman. I'm probably Ireland's third most famous Jewish son.

A big part of filmmaking is gathering a group of people you can work with.

I've been in rooms where people are discussing films that have yet to come out and saying delightedly, 'Oh, I've heard it's a disaster!' The jealousy is unseemly.

The most conventional romantic trope of all is that you put lovers under extreme pressure, where they have to make decisions that illuminate aspects of that bond.

Trying to make something as tricky as 'Room' really believable is extremely hard, and it largely rests with that relationship between the actors and the director, and the director and the crew.

Open your arms to the world.

At what point in my struggle with nature will nature finally give up?

Adversity is a good test of our resiliency, our ability to cope, to stand back up, to recover from misfortune. Adversity is a painful pedagogue.

I always worry when someone's a good golfer. It's like you shouldn't have time to be good at anything. You should just be a politician and you shouldn't have time to practice golf.

To tell the truth, fishermen remain always boys as far as their amusement goes.

Got to keep losing horses," he said drowsily. "Bad habit.

I think the brutality is important to convey as part of the story, to see how brutal it is to have these kids in battle with one another.

Love. People threw that word around like carzy.

I'm certainly honest - and I can be socially awkward.

If you have extremes of haves and have-nots where the gap keeps growing, the have-nots group together and create social disorder, as they can't see a way out of their situation.