The thing is, I'm a very practical filmmaker.

As a director, I also get to sit and watch actors and learn from them in a way that I don't get to do when I'm just acting.

I'm a control freak. Totally.

A dream that you don't fight for can haunt you for the rest of your life.

Ripe bananas are the mark of a good produce section. A good produce section is the mark of a superior grocery store. A superior grocery store is the mark of a good man.

Like Joseph Mitchell, I would scour the streets of New York and find little pieces of what other people think of as junk - and collect it.

Sometimes we all make relationships more complicated than they necessarily have to be.

I write in the mornings. During my down time.

People wear shorts to the Broadway theater. There should be a law against that.

My partner, Beth Alexander, and I want to produce smaller films, but commercially viable films that will enable me to make the kinds of movies I want to make.

I have consciously not taken the role of a gangster, which has been offered to me far too many times.

The quality of knowledge youbring into the relationshipdetermines the quality of therelationship.

Improving intelligence is possible, but it is more likely to occur if children are given the right experiences at the right ages.

If I'll be funnier than this, I'll become a joke.

The test audience holds a great deal of power in the process of filmmaking in the United States.

The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it: though I’ll do my best. But you’re right. We must rescue ourselves as best we can.

It's not who you are, who you are friends, and how popular they are, it's just about how much you get out of each friendship and how much you learn from each one that really counts.

It has been surprising to me that so few conservatives have voiced concern over the precedence that are being set in favor of suppression by this so-called conservative administration.

No one can estimate the power of authority among poor and uneducated people in a world whose problems confuse even the wisest.

By taking the time to live life in the slow lane, we quickly experience a deeper, more profound experience of contentment.

We just got to go on, that's all. That's what grownups would do.