So now I'm left with cigarettes, and I'm trying to scrape that off my shoe and then I'll be done.

I take comfort that aging happens to everybody. It's part of life. Aging offers great lessons in dignity, since the indignity wins in the end. Yes, it bothers me when I have lines or puffiness or droops. But it connects me with the human race. Like weather bringing people together, aging brings people together.

I think that directing is the ultimate martyred task of filmmaking, that it has nobility to it. It takes three years to make a film, for the most part. I think it requires the attentiveness of a mother hen. I don't know how people raise children and direct films. I'm sorry, I don't know, how can you be good at both?

Catholics have guilt and Jews have guilt, fine. But mothers can trump them all.

Every film is its own experience, its own planet, its own family. It seems infinite when you're working on it, and then it's suddenly very finite, and it's done.

If people knew what made hits they'd make more of them, so to have the illusion of control over one's career isn't something I can even pretend to have.

I've always had this unresolved desire to prove that I could get a Ph.D., or contribute something else to the world.