If I spend a year and a half writing a script, the first year will be outlining in notebooks. It's just the way I work, definitely not necessarily the best way.

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.

There are people who believe in the basic goodness of human nature. I believe in the basic evil of human nature. ~ Aarush Kashyap

Verily, a man should not cling to those who have passed, for he will likely neglect service to the living.

I'm afraid one thing - I don't like heights. Heights bug me out. I'm not cool with heights. I refuse to do a comedy show 12 stories up. I'm fearless about everything else.

As we shave it happens that we cut ourself with the razor blade; this does not mean that we must not shave in the morning any longer. It is the same thing for yoga.

My voice, I have to say, is kind of miraculous because I was born with a cleft palate.

To me the function of politics is to make possible the desirable.

As for real chicken soup, I have it once or twice a week.

Sometimes it seems to me that the celebration of a person is really just a prelude to ridicule.

People and relationships never stop being a work in progress

It's terrifying to be the lead. There's a moment of excitement, and then pure terror.