Sidney Lumet is one of my favorite filmmakers. I feel like his approach to filmmaking was always so human. He was always making movies about the people. He wasn't about the tricks, you know what I mean? From 12 Angry Men on. Another film of his which I really, really love is Prince of the City, with Treat Williams, which is kind of a lost classic. Lumet is one of those film heroes that changed movies for everyone.

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.

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.

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.

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

From making documentaries all these years, it doesn't feel right to lead someone. In narratives, I'm always trying to shoot as though it's really happening, and I trust my actors are going to make decisions that I'm going to be following. I want to follow them. It feels dishonest to be pulling back in that opening shot and leading him to his destiny.