A lawyer actually has to see all sides of a situation. Lawyers actually might be the most understanding human beings.

I always say writing is like dreaming, shooting is like living, and editing is like murder, because you take all these gifts that actors give you, and you cut them.

There's one rule that I have on my movies, which is that anything that you want to do, you can do. But! There's a flip side to that, which is that anything I want you to do, give it a try also.

You can never maintain just pure happiness. In my life, I want full emotion. I want equal parts happiness and sadness.

I love crosscut parallel storytelling, like we did in Blue Valentine. I love how Alejandro González Iñárritu has done it, and Quentin Tarantino, and Francis Ford Coppola, and all the way back to D.W. Griffith - this parallel editing is an effective way to tell stories. It's like juggling, like keeping a lot of balls in the air and seeing how they come down.

Yeah as the director I consider myself to be the coach, and my actors are my players. So I have to show them how committed I am, but I also want to lead by example. I think whenever you make a film, you start out alone, and then slowly start - you have to be a magnet. You have to attract people to you, to the project.

I tell the actors that the biggest gift they can give me is to fail. And that the second gift they can give me is to surprise me.