Being an American, what I've noticed is that we're in such a race. You wake up and you realize you're in the middle of a race, and some people are running right by you.

I think squaring up success to equal money is silly, because it's so undeserved.

I think fate is massive, and it's never really had its place among forces we respect as having control over us.

The challenges should be familiar. They should have some relationship to the feelings - like, if a movie's about being demoralized at work, it should feel familiar to people, whether you're a roofer or a lifeguard. But there's a million different ways to be demoralized, especially at work.

It's an absolute myth that early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. Of course it doesn't.

One of the things I noticed about the world was - it's funny, in the movie business, you meet a kind of guy who has a lot of money, whether they came by it as an actor or film-studio owner, and you realize these people aren't any smarter than you might be, or any more decent than you might be. It's just this weird fate of the world that it broke one way for someone.

The people around whom I've lived most of my life, they're similar. They have same expectations of life that aren't exaggerated, they could be accomplished, they could get what they want. But they could not, too. It's not to be taken for granted. Even getting by, and being satisfied, barely, is hard.