A book suggests a whole world and story that I could have never thought of in a million years.

Even if we die at 100, we're still dying young. I want at least 700 years. There's a lot of travelling and books to read and movies to see. I'm not going to squeeze it all in in 85 years.

I love comedies. I take comedy very seriously as a form. It's a serious form, involving a certain way of looking at life, specifically the painful aspects of life. I get asked, "How can you have such failures in your films?" Well, what else is life about? There's some sense of constant failure in something. Humor gives you a distance from it.

The worst thing for people to say about your movies is, "Yeah, it was pretty good, but it was too damn long.".

The kindest thing a director can do is look with open eyes at everything.

A lot of people get stuck, like, "Oh, if it's made by a studio, it can't be independent." Often they link it to the source of financing, or how it's distributed, but I don't really know how you can. A filmmaker will take his money from anywhere. It doesn't matter.

I definitely in filmmaking more and more find writing and directing a means to harvest material for editing. It's all about editing.