I want my movies to be audience experiences. As much as I like Michael Haneke, I'm not going to make a Haneke film. That's just not in my DNA.

I am an obsessive flyer, myself.

Yeah, I was born in Montreal and I go back to Vancouver and Toronto a lot, so I have a sense of being Canadian, and I was raised by two Canadians, and my wife is Canadian, so yeah, I feel it.

Most people see a documentary about the meat industry and then they become a vegetarian for a week.

I think it's a mistake for young filmmakers to just buy digital equipment and shoot a feature. Make short films first, make your mistakes and learn from them.

Directing 'The Office' is kind of like someone going, 'Would you like to drive my Lamborghini?' And I'm like 'Yes, I would like to drive your Lamborghini. That sounds like fun.'

Comedy and horror are cousins; they're related. They both come from storytellers who want to specifically affect the audience and elicit specific reactions during the movie.

I'm a believer that people need to understand that filmmaking is not a perfect process for anybody. It is a process in which you find the film and the film finds you. And that is every film.

With each one of my films, I'm exploring one of my own issues and I try to expose myself a little in the film.

I don't know why I'm drawn to anti-heroes, but I certainly am.

Really, it's the director's job to disappear and allow the movie to just feel.

will you be the one reading the book or writing the book

Morality binds people into groups. It gives us tribalism, it gives us genocide, war, and politics. But it also gives us heroism, altruism, and sainthood.

I wanna be a nice guy.

Modern physics has... revealed that every sub-atomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction.

We are doomed to choose and every choice may entail irreparable loss.

It is not our wealth that built our roads, but it is our roads that built our wealth.

We ought to observe that practice which is the hardest of all - especially for young physicians - we ought to throw in no medicine at all - to abstain - to observe a wise and masterly inactivity.

Our most merciless enemy is our past.

The smartest thing I ever did was to hire my weakness.

The skeptic, being a lover of his kind, desires to cure by speech, as best he can, the self-conceit and rashness of the dogmatists.