Families can be the most detrimental things to have in your life. They are sometimes the most poisonous relationships that people have. Sometimes family is the thing that keeps you from ever achieving what you want to achieve, and yet people hold it and hold it and grab it and try to fix it and twist it and turn it.

These television shows that have 14 shots of somebody looking at each other with the wind blowing through their hair drive me insane.

It's tough to get any film made, even if you're Martin Scorsese. It's just hard to get films made.

People have nannies and big cars, and they want to go to Maui for Christmas. When there are those kind of stakes involved, people get ruthless.

As a writer, all you want to do is write for great actors. That's all.

You've gotta have a path [in your life]. And then, within that path, you have to be flexible. When things aren't working, you've gotta cut bait and find something else, but if you don't have a path, you're just dead.

I grew up in the Valley, and I didn't know any of our neighbors. I think when you grow up like that, there's always sort of a fantasy of a place where everybody knew each other, and you had that safe sort of feeling.