The attitude of the director is really important, in terms of setting tone.

What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.

We don't have a lot of space in our imaginations to allow people to expand what they do.

There's something touching about a kid who's reading a book that's printed on actual paper. I think that anything that kids start reading, within reason, can lead to other discoveries.

An obsessive attention to the news, I've realized, only serves to paint a picture of the world as a throbbing blob of dysfunction, most news falling somewhere on a scale from disappointing to calamitous.

I have really good female friends. I've never bought the whole men-and-women-can't-be-friends thing. I think that's sort of nonsense.

It's not our job to play judge and jury, to determine who is worthy of our kindness and who is not. We just need to be kind, unconditionally and without ulterior motive, even - or rather, especially - when we'd prefer not to be.