Every time you make something that somebody likes, your impulse is to remind them that if you hadn't made some of these other things that they hated, you wouldn't have been able to make the thing that they liked.

There's a big difference between a movie about relationships and a movie in which people talk about relationships. It seems like a lot of people have confused the two.

There is sadness of when you're watching someone enjoy something that you think is substandard. The ineffable sadness when someone is happy and something is not as good as it should be.

There's a difference between failures and things that are bad.

You can create meaning where there was none, you can create feeling where there was none, you can create narrative where there was none. Two frames can be the difference between something that works and something that doesn't. It's fascinating.

To me the director’s job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.

I find myself in situations a lot where I have to say to someone, "This can be better," and it's hard to say that.