It's interesting when you wind up distilling all your ambitions and your goals and dreams into one single person. It's giving that person a lot of power.

ANDREW: But do you think there’s a line? You know, where you discourage the next Charlie Parker from becoming Charlie Parker?FLETCHER: No. Because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.

The greatest thing has been that projects that were pipe dreams before 'Whiplash' are now feeling more realistic.

I've always wanted to make movies that are fever dreams.

I love movies where you can sense that the director risked biting off more than they can chew.

I find L.A. kind of romantic, actually. As a movie junkie, it's a city that was built by the movies. There's something really weird and surreal about it that I find energizing.

I like movies that are specific. Movies that home in on a very specific subculture, a specific discipline, a specific world.

'La La Land' is about the city I live in. It's about the music that I grew up playing it's about movies that I grew up watching. Even the big spectacle of the movie feels private to me in that way.

You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

Who we are and how we engage with the world are much stronger predictors of how our children will do than what we know about parenting.

I think when the full horror of being fifty hits you, you should stay home and have a good cry.

My biggest fear in life is to be forgotten.

Search until you find a passion and go all out to excel in its expression.

I sometimes think I'm a mechanic. I just take pictures.

As a studio, you have to have a niche. You have to provide a service and there has to be a reason for your being around.

Everybody talks about population growth and its disastrous effect on climate change, food security and resource depletion, but nobody does anything about it

Eat, taste the food, and still remember that you are the watcher.