Suspense films are often based on communication problems, and that affects all of the plot points. It almost gives it kind of a fable feeling.

To be a creative person and be a professional, as an artist you have to be able to withstand pain, rejection, and for some, a lot of bad feelings, but you have to be able to look through those.

All history is defined by shifting modes of reality and time and how things change. That’s what I love about cinema. It changes in the moment.

By 1988, I was living in New York myself.

To me, honesty and the difficulty of honest communication are at the heart of both my life and my movies. The difficulty of being yourself.

You are always factoring in the economy within the process of creating something, and making decisions that seem both fearless and full of fear.

I'm a version of the same person.

I actually feel that all drama has an element of comedy in it. A great deal of that I learned from writers like Chekhov who called his plays his comedy even when they touch on tragedy.

The questions of economics, and how they infect, or rather how they affect intimacy. And that's probably the subject of all my films.

For me, an actor is really, first and foremost, a person and an individual, more than they are an actor or a professional.

I'm interested in what actors reveal about themselves through the structure of the character.

There is no better exercise for strengthening the heart than reaching down and lifting up another.

A beauty is a woman you notice a charmer is one who notices you.

I'm sure men have their own ways of trying to demean one another, but women can be very gossipy and judgmental, and that doesn't help.

It's a great life, if you don't weaken.

I remember when I was working on All Alone in the Universe, and Robin Roy was my editor. When I first sent it to her, she said kids this age don't want pictures in their books.

I co-taught a seminar called Small Group Processes with my professor. I learned so much from it, so much about myself, about groups, how this stuff works. I bring all that stuff to teaching now.

Sometimes it's worth getting lost to see who will come looking for us.

The notion that a story has a message assumes that it can be reduced to a few abstract words, neatly summarized in a school or college examination paper or a brisk critical review.

The production of souls is the secret of unfathomable depth.

Character begins to form at the first pinch of anxiety about ourselves.