The way financing for independent movies goes is great. You get the money from the guy who's actually doing the distribution in France. You say, "Do you want a piece of this movie?" And he's got to sell this movie to get his money back. That's the brains of it; that's the genius of this financing. "You want Germany? Give us a million dollars and you've got Germany."

I was at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards one year - they called me up when somebody canceled two days before the thing, and asked me to present some awards. So I went, and one of the funniest film moments I've ever had was when they introduced the New York film critics. They all stood up - motley isn't the word for that group. Everybody had some sort of vision problem, some sort of damage - I had to bury myself in my napkin.

If you have a good script, that's what gets you involved. It's harder to write a good screenplay than to find something.

Every moment that you share someone else's pain, feel what they feel, makes you more human.

You can tell how boring a person is by the lack of fear in their eyes when someone is flipping through photos on their phone.

I think that the online world has actually brought books back. People are reading because they're reading the damn screen. That's more reading than people used to do.

No one really wants to admit they are lonely, and it is never really addressed very much between friends and family. But I have felt lonely many times in my life.