Our natural tendency is to project onto other people our own belief and value systems, in ways in which we are not even aware.

Ethics and power are separate. Ethics and morality. I think life would be miserable if there weren't some kind of code that people operated by, but history is full of many, many people who have gotten power by very unethical means, and people who were very ethical, who get no power, people who have the most brilliant, lovely, wonderful, nice intentions and bring about horrible things in the world because they don't know how to play the power game.

If you're consumed only with the big dream, you're going to die because you won't be able to feed yourself or you're going to be losing your job, so you'll just be sitting in your room dreaming, but if you're only holding onto the crap jobs that keep you just above of the water you're going to be unhappy. You're going to be burnt out, washed out.

Early on in life I knew that I was a writer, that I just wanted to write, I love books, I love literature and after graduating college, I kind of wandered around in Europe learning languages and writing novels and never led anywhere. And then I got into like journalism in New York as a way to kind of maybe find my way into the field and it wasn't a good fit. It just wasn't right for me.

Hasty climbers have sudden falls.

I was working on other things and I wanted to make a film, and I had some ideas brewing in my head. Brandy's [ Burre] circumstance was such that I didn't really know what was going to happen. That was obviously a surprise, but I knew she was in her mid-to-late thirties and she was starting to really think about her life in a way that really appealed to me, appealed to the women that I know in my life.

If marriage isn't something for me, but I like living with someone or being committed, I can choose this other path as long as she's okay with it but I would hardly say that that should be what other people do. Some people want that, that written paper, that commitment and that means something to them. And I don't in the least look down on it.