My characters are always on the outside; the spotlight's not on them. But they do get somewhere.

I like to look at how people work together when they are put into stressful situations, when life stops being cozy.

Art can make a difference because it pulls people up short. It says, don't accept things for their face value; you don't have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself.

I don't know how to answer. I know what I think, but words in the head are like voices underwater. They are distorted.

I felt like a seed in a pomegranate. Some say that the pomegranate was the real apple of Eve, fruit of the womb, I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalization. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable.

Quest is at the heart of what I do-the holy grail, and the terror that you'll never find it, seemed a perfect metaphor for life.

I find pieces of myself everywhere, and I cut myself handling them.

Do you fall in love often?" Yes often. With a view, with a book, with a dog, a cat, with numbers, with friends, with complete strangers, with nothing at all.

I would eat my way into perdition to taste you.

Life cannot be calculated. That's the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation -- it is part of the equation.

Focus on keeping faith and growing your roots of light so strong and deep that no one, not even yourself, can make you believe something about yourself that is not good for your soul.

I had my group of friends, you know, like my real group of friends, and then I had, like, party friends.

There are worse things than being constantly hired to do anything.

How can you expect someone to get a good day's work if they are interrupted all day?

I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets.

Just speak very loudly and quickly, and state your position with utter conviction, as the French do, and you'll have a marvelous time!

The lyric self is the self; the narrative self is not.

If we knew the value of suffering, we would ask for it.

If you believe, so will they.

I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit.