As a first-time director, you cannot have final cut. But as a producer, you can have final cut.

And yet one carries the sins of his forebears as one carries their features in his face. One bears their blood, and their honor or their blight.

I think that during the shoot, you should never be there, unless something goes really wrong and as producer, you're responsible. The sign you did your job right is if you are not there.

If at age 10 I say there are monsters in the basement and they don't believe it, I would have stayed in that house. My father would have said "Shut up and get to your room." So I thought the only sanctioned tyranny in the world is parenthood and everybody goes "Yeah." It's a dictatorship - parenthood.

The butterfly does not look back upon its caterpillar self, either fondly or wistfully; it simply flies on.

At some point, in order to gain his identity, the kid goes "I'm not my dad" or "I'm not my mom."

People think you're like The Godfather, waiting for scripts to come in. But, you're hustling, you're desperate, you're panicked and you're horrified. The movie you think you're going to do next, you don't do. The movie you think you're never going to do, you make.