This is how good movies get made and always have: from the gut instinct of the financiers, not just by committee and research.

What is filmmaking but groping in the dark?

If you were falling in love and you could go back in time and relive a day and see the banal things you did that you'd forgotten about, you'd weep, looking at that day.

I like actors who, when you see them on screen, you sense a person, not just an actor.

I think a badly crafted, great idea for a new film with a ton of spelling mistakes is just 100 times better than a well-crafted stale script.

There is an audience out there for literate films - slower, more observant, more human films, and they deserve to be made.

You just never know when you're living in a golden age.

The biggest fear I have is to die with regrets, and of course that will come true.

A pitfall of making a comedy with a studio-and it's also an American cultural thing-is that I get tired of being encouraged to go always for laughs.

I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.

If you have your movies so that everyone understands everything, I think that's probably not a very good movie.

Life is hidden in a day and a day is hidden in life.

We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

Even in my own time and in my own life, I have witnessed a revolution.

My sister might be dumb, but that doesn't make her all that different from the rest of us. She's just like any other American. Except she's Canadian. And retarded.

My parents recognized something in me that they encouraged instead of deflated, and I'll always be grateful to them for that.

Devotion is about you. Maybe you use another object as inspiration, but you change your quality; you walk more joyfully, gently upon this planet.

I'm not a feminist. I hail men, I love men.

The important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world with fresh eyes.

Don't whine... laugh.

Say 'Dodgers' and people know you're talking about baseball. Say 'Braves' and they ask, 'What reservation?' Say 'Reds' and they think of communism. Say 'Padres' and they look around for a priest.