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."

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.

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

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.

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.

Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.

I never promise anything. I don't promise anything to my mum. I don't promise anything to the supporters.

Now, with that being said, we cannot allow, we shouldn't have gone into Iraq.

I can now see to the bottom of my own depths, there is nothing stopping my gaze, no obstacle is in the way. And there is nothing there.

Ive been doing stand-up since I was 15 years old.

Success isn't supposed to happen, no matter how hard you work. There's no guarantee you're going to succeed. There's nothing set in stone.

That the soft overcomes the hard, and the yielding overcomes the resistant, is a fact known by all, but practiced by few.

I studied the cello for a long time, from when I was little up through college.

A show of daring oft conceals great fear.

For here, I hope, begins our lasting joy.