I hate movies that take a long time to shoot or directors that labor over every shot or do excessive amounts of coverage and excessive takes and don't keep things moving or constantly cutting.

As a director, I also get to sit and watch actors and learn from them in a way that I don't get to do when I'm just acting.

I'm a control freak. Totally.

A dream that you don't fight for can haunt you for the rest of your life.

Ripe bananas are the mark of a good produce section. A good produce section is the mark of a superior grocery store. A superior grocery store is the mark of a good man.

Like Joseph Mitchell, I would scour the streets of New York and find little pieces of what other people think of as junk - and collect it.

The thing is, I'm a very practical filmmaker.

Sometimes we all make relationships more complicated than they necessarily have to be.

I write in the mornings. During my down time.

People wear shorts to the Broadway theater. There should be a law against that.

My partner, Beth Alexander, and I want to produce smaller films, but commercially viable films that will enable me to make the kinds of movies I want to make.

Bursts of hope make despair harder to live with.

These days, most of the people you hear laughing are dead.

There is a cure for temptation. What? Yielding to it.

Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it.

He had got down to the bones of it, and they were fine and strong and simple.

There are but three ways for the populace to escape its wretched lot. The first two are by the routes of the wine-shop or the church; the third is by that of the social revolution.

People are so used to having their lives filmed, they're not even conscious of having cameras around. I still have that sort of suspicion when a camera comes out. I view it as a thing to fear.

The devil only exists because of your belief in him; same goes for that other guy.

I would not dare so dishonor my Creator's name by attaching it to this filthy book.

I disagree with everything I used to say.