The endings for all my characters seem sufficiently human and messy for me to feel comfortable with them. In some ways they have only moved an inch, but sometimes an inch is a great distance.

The holy trifecta of directing and filmmaking is character emotion, camera movement and music. When you hit those three, that's magical. That's what I'm trying to do.

I hadn't made that movie before and when I ever met the real Joy Mangano, which happened because De Niro insisted we meet her and her father, that's what she felt like to us. She impressed us with her quiet, serene authority with herself.

It's my experience that endings are never easy, and I think I'm not alone among filmmakers or writers in this.

The investigation of consciousness has come to be regarded suspiciously by most smart people and by most scientists. That's a legacy that began with the Inquisition, which considered non-Christian spiritual inquiry as blasphemous.

As people, [my parents were] very colorful, very talkative, passionate, they really loved each other. But that also meant heated, it meant there was a lot of drama in the house. Which is good for a filmmaker, I think.

There's nothing better than having a collaborator that you have a great shorthand with and a great comfort with who's shepherding the project along. I mean, that's the best thing that can happen in cinema where there's many cooks in the kitchen.