I couldn't be a novelist for instance. It feels like a very lonely endeavor. I don't know that I could survive the solitude of that.

A whole film is just about arriving at a moment where you hopefully transfer some feeling to the audience.

I believe in what science fiction can do, which is it can set up simple rules that it has to follow to try to illuminate something about the present that is somewhat invisible to us.

One of my favorite stories growing up was 'A Wrinkle in Time'. I loved that book.

When I'm sitting writing, I know that something works if I've made myself cry, or laugh, or have a visceral emotion.

Human beings are flawed and complicated and messy.

I'm still a bit of a romantic and an idealist and hopelessly naive.

Writing so that I can act became a way of having not more control over my future but not having to wait for permission. You can choose yourself. Hmm, who should play this part? I nominate me!

Life and death and birth is this fantastic mystery that we cannot fully grasp.

I think what's so attractive about acting is that you get to live several lifetimes in one.

People go to the cinema to be moved; they wanna laugh, they wanna cry, they wanna feel something deeply, especially if they're not feeling deeply in their own lives.

We can't give a child a natural consequence. The only truly natural consequences are the ones found in nature.

I've always been interested in arrival, and coming to a space, and even to looking back at where you were.

A world of confusion and disappointment results from trying to believe without obeying.

The wise person finds enemies more useful than the fool does friends .

It is wise to listen, not to me but to the Word, and to confess that all things are one.

People want what they want. Sometimes you just have to walk in defiance of it and just be yourself.

Art makes something a lot more visible or audible.

I'll watch any show on the History Channel.

What do you want to want to be, anyway?" "I don't know; I guess what I want to be is a good Catholic." "What you should say"--he told me--"what you should say is that you want to be a saint.

The great ones never take fundamentals for granted.