You're being mean to someone who's helping you. What is that? Everyone knows who the assholes are, and I avoid them.

I make every movie like it's the last one. "If this was the last movie, what decision would I make?" That's how I make my decisions.

I guess I just look at talent as a very subjective thing. I mean, if you never tried playing an oboe, how do you know you're not the most talented oboe player ever? The point is that if you don't love it, then it doesn't matter.

It's pretty clear to me that working as a director for hire agrees with me. I like it. The films that have come out of that, I personally like better than the ones that didn't.

We [people] are a species that's wired to tell stories. We need stories. It's how we make sense of things. It's how we learn.

Nobody's talking about movies the way they're talking about their favorite TV shows.

I think that music is a very difficult art form in which to be avant-garde. When we sit down to listen to a piece of music, I think our implicit hope is that we're going to find it beautiful, or at least emotional, on some level.