One of my life philosophies is that you have a choice to make when you're doing something creative. You can be cheesy... or you can be lame.

Earnestness can ferment into sentimentality.

It's really hard to find just a simple character-driven drama, outside of a genre, that was available to direct, except for on TV.

Nerds are running the world. Andrew Garfield made a movie [called “The Social Network”] about it. Nerds are no longer pariahs and knowing how to write computer code is longer a [mocked] quality. What was important in those early comics was this notion that Peter Parker is an outsider and how we define that in a contemporary context. That, I think, was one of the challenges for us — getting Peter Parker’s outsider status to be current.

I always remembered that when I saw people get married they got on a rocketship and went to Planet Happiness, Population: Them.

I think one of the things about Peter Parker that is so great, and what has made him and Spider-Man last so long is he is a kid that we all feel connected to, he's not an alien, he's not a millionaire, he's just this kid that has trouble asking girls out.

One of my life philosophies is that you have a choice to make when you're doing something creative. You can be cheesy... or you can be lame.