I just want to thank people who take big risks in their daily lives when there aren't cameras rolling. I want to dedicate this award to people who stand up for peace and against injustice and intolerance.

It takes me awhile to find something that I'm passionate about. I'm reading a lot and thinking a lot, and torturing myself a lot because I'm feeling really guilty for not writing something today.

You don't do pictures because the audience is ready for them. You do them because there's something gnawing at you, something inside.

We think we know what's right. With excessive pride comes blindness.

Now we really like to put people in boxes. As men, we do it because we don't understand characters that aren't ourselves and we aren't willing to put ourselves in the skin of those characters and women, I think, terrify us. We tend not to write women as human beings. It's cartoons we're making now. And that's a shame.

I like taking genres and subverting them. I did that with In the Valley of Elah. I said, "Okay, this is just a murder mystery. Relax." And then, two thirds of the way through, I broke every convention of a murder mystery.

Usually the characters are where I start. Then I continually ask myself, 'What's the worst thing that could happen to this character?'