I think a good director can embrace any genre and it's the kind of thing where you always want to do something different. You always want to challenge yourself.

[If] you want to learn something about somebody, get into a fistfight. You'll learn more in five minutes than you will in five weeks of conversations. It's basic.

I'm not a film-school guy. I was a high-school dropout. I was on a nuclear submarine. I was an electrician. I was a house painter. So if you get in my face, I'm going to fight you.

Well, as far as film, either you're making a film or you're making videos. Digital capture is always trying to emulate the range and look of film. I believe personally that film has more.

I like to do stuff real and practical and in camera, as much as possible. I like old school filmmaking.

To operate а tank as a crew, it's not about five individuals. It has to be one organism, composed of five people.

I feel like, as a filmmaker, I'm at my strongest when I write the script and when it comes from me, out of whole cloth. My best work has always been self-generated.

You never know what you have until you put it in front of an audience. That's the truth. That's the truth of filmmaking and that's why you make movies, for an audience to, hopefully, enjoy it.

I'm one of those big believers that the movie comes together in the way it's supposed to be and that movies are fated to become what they become.

My mantra is "Better is better".

The most terrifying thing in my life is a blank sheet of paper.

Once your fairytale gets shattered multiple times, life will finally paint reality in its place.

Never step on caterpillars, as one day, they'll become butterflies and you'll never know when you'll need a ride on its wings of fortune.

I grew up in Stillwater, Minnesota in a proud Catholic family.

Maybe people become bitter when they don't know what they are fighting for. But I keep my eyes open.

No monkey ever reheated a frozen burrito.

I do all of my good thinking at over 65 miles per hour. The speed limit is, luckily, the same speed as my brainstorming speed.

They both smiled at the picture of Albert in his chinos and button-down shirt exhorting kids from atop a bike.

I belong to everybody and I belong to nobody.

Everybody has their own opinion and own ideas of what beauty is.

I see a schoolboy when I think of him, With face and nose pressed to a sweet-shop window.