I'd always wanted to work in television once I found out that they started to hire independent filmmakers to direct.

It's just not enough time on set. That's my favorite time. I live for that time on set. I feel like that's when I'm stretching and flexing my muscles and learning how to direct better.

I'm drawn again and again to relationships between people who really, really want to connect and just can't get out of their own way to do it.

Flaws make us all human, and you're rooting for characters because of those flaws. It's ageless if you're interested in relationships and the way people can or can't relate to each other.

Although humor is present in every one of my films, it has always been used as a way to make the darker, heavier stuff in my stories more palatable. I never set out to make 'Humpday' a comedy.

All we really want in life is to connect to other human beings, and when you desperately want to connect physically to one specific human being and you can't? That's something I find compelling.

It feels to me like everyone is going to do their best work when they feel emotionally safe.

I had a background in theater as an actor, and then a photographer, and then as an experimental filmmaker and editor.

I feel like this is the way I was meant to interact with acting. Which is as a director, and helping, working with actors to find their way. Facilitating their performances is so satisfying for me.

There's so much great TV and I always thought it would be such a fun little sideway to make money and then not have to worry about my films making a lot of money.

I can connect with whoever I want to connect with in the world. And I can also write my own script. I don't have to follow rules. I can sort of just be unconventional.

The danger today is in believing there are no sick people, there is only a sick society.

Power like no other...

Dream’s elixir veered between light and clouds to save the blue..

... Whenever the man of science introduces his personal value judgment, a full understanding of the facts ceases.

I try to find humor in everything I do, because I think all great plays - even great tragedies - have enormous humor in them.

If you were falling in love and you could go back in time and relive a day and see the banal things you did that you'd forgotten about, you'd weep, looking at that day.

When a candidate walks away from a reality show, that's when you know they're serious about being president of the United States.

I got good notice from that show, and on the last day of filming Townies, Twentieth Century Fox called wanting to meet with me about a development deal.

All my adult life I've been in the practice of giving advice to people who are happier than I am.

Nobody can tell me that no changes are necessary in Washington.