I'm drawn to making movies about contemporary life. The reason I choose institutions is because they provide a limit, a boundary.

My goal is to make as many films as possible about different aspects of American life.

There's a literal track: who says what to whom, what are people wearing, etcetera. And there's the abstract track: what ideas are suggested by the literal. And the real movie takes place in the relationship between the literal and the abstract.

One's relationship to time is complicated, and sometimes a day will drag on forever and sometimes it'll be over in a flash. When you look back, "I'm old," after 40 or 60 years, I can't believe I'm as old as I am.

I don't really know what I want, other than good sequences, whatever that means. What I find is always a matter of chance, judgment, and luck.

I'm too busy to be nostalgic, which is one of the reasons to keep busy. I'm not a very sentimental person.

I'm interested in ordinary experience, and regardless of the precise definition of ordinary, and I've found that in so-called ordinary experience, there is as much comedy, tragedy, sadness, as there is in great drama. And I don't invent it, I recognize it.