Philip Glass once told me, "They can always copy what you've done, but they can't copy what you're going to do."

I envy certain writers, because there are writers who do go into a kind of different zone, where the writing isn't controlled anymore.

If you told me thirty years ago that people would be parodying documentary films, I never would have believed it. It wasn't clear that the films themselves even had an audience, let alone an audience for parodies of them.

People think in narratives - in beginnings, middles and ends. The danger when you edit something too severely is that it no longer makes sense; worse still, it leaves people with the disquieting impression that something is being hidden.

I think calling someone a character is a compliment.

What's interesting is that Citizen Kane was meant as an anti-fascist/anti-capitalist melodrama and for Donald Trump it becomes just another kind of misogynistic claim that misses the point.

I like to think that every movie emerges from the conversations.