The biggest mistake I made was not having a full-time producer. I was securing locations and wardrobe and making sure people get called to show up on time and getting the film to the lab and getting the camera, and all this stuff that I'm happy to do, but if I'm doing every little thing, I'm not concentrating on my story. So it never gets any better than the script.

I never got into 'MacGyver,' but 'All the President's Men' and 'The Conversation' were big for me.

All I know is that as an audience member, I am less and less inclined to go to the theater.

When I started writing short stories, I thought I was writing a novel. I had like 60 or 70 pages. And what I realized was that I don't write inner monologue. I don't want to talk about what somebody is thinking or feeling. I wanted to try to show it in an interesting way. And so what I realized was that I was really writing a screenplay.

When something is beautiful in math, everything is just perfectly lined up, and you see through sheer thought that something really beautiful can take place.

I don't believe that narrative works when it's trying to teach a lesson or speak a factual truth.

If something can be explored or illuminated that would have been difficult to verbalize, that to me is what a film should be. It's like trying to explain what a piece of music is like. You can't do it.