I really spend as long as I can sketching everything out and working on the structure before I sit down to type out scenes.

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.

Belief has the power to change your inner state and your outer world.

True, the body's easily maimed, and the spirit can be crippled - yet there's that in a man that is never destroyed.

The world has come to such a state that one can no longer find anyone who does good.

When one man says, “No, I won’t,” Rome begins to fear.

Comparison is the thief of all joy.

No matter what the subject, the subject is always love.

I wish my days could be washed away like the chalk lines of my days.

As always, most media aligns with the presumptive winner even though their claimed societal virtue is to investigate those in power.

Lately I’ve been working to convince myself that everything is a computation.

The actual danger is nothing, and the positive advantages very great.