It happens sometimes that when someone has a camera, they change; sometimes they change for the better.

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.

There's something so glorious in giving control to the world. I think that's what I'm trying to do in my films-control the world but also let it be chaotic, let there be life.

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

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.

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.

When I made my student film, a feature, nobody wanted to talk to me and I was, like, in the desert for 12 years.