Writing in a lot of ways feels more like excavation than construction. It feels like you're uncovering this thing bit by bit, discovering what it is, instead of constructing it upwards.

Belgrade has kind of a Dublinesque, dear-dirty charm.

My favorite sci-fi always uses its hook to amplify some bigger theme or idea - some emotional thrust.

Much of directing [a movie] is not directing but just listening and being present in the moment and just keeping your eyes open.

If you make something interesting, inevitably not everybody is going to like it.

You go from these high hopes when you're writing to just a desperate want of not making a complete fool of yourself by the end of it.

All my favorite movies are somebody else's least favorite movie.

You come out of each movie just thinking, "God, if we can fool them into letting us make just one more, we can get it right."

Writing sucks. I think it's terrible. Writing is not fun, and don't trust anyone who claims to enjoy it. Liars!

Showing your movie to an audience... it's like your kid doing a piano recital. 'Just let it not fail. Please.

If I spend a year and a half writing a script, the first year will be outlining in notebooks. It's just the way I work, definitely not necessarily the best way.

being afraid to take chances is scarier than actually doing things that challenge you.

The definition of the word 'finished' is: 'This word means finished.

She’d never seen such a thing back on Grave

I used to think that my mother got into arguments with people because they didn't understand her English, because she was Chinese.

Hillary Clinton asks her supporters to recite a three-word loyalty pledge. It reads: "I'm with her." I choose to recite a different pledge. My pledge reads: "I'm with you, the American people."

I have learned that I am also a person who has to be able to go fishing whenever I can and for as long as I want to go. It is a silly thing, but there it is.

The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life.

All invincible and stuff

I have always had a sense of curiosity and aspiration.