If you just work on your craft hard, that's your only hope of doing anything worthwhile.

I got a nomination for director, which means the world to me; it's just the most exciting thing for me and my family. You do the good hard work, and the rest of it is something you shouldn't get too caught up in, but when it happens - boy! I respect it.

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 suppose what I like about Zen is that the teachers are constantly questioning your insight and challenging it, looking for sloppiness or laziness in it, and ways you can go past that.

You can't force a movie to happen. Movies happen when they're supposed to happen. Everything happens in God's time. I really believe that.

I think I land somewhere between Scorsese and Capra in what I'm drawn to emotionally; I'm drawn to very intense emotion. Capra freaked people out when they saw Jimmy Stewart lose it in 'It's a Wonderful Life.

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.