Some directors hardly talk to the actors at all.

A movie takes on its own life, and you have to respect that and be open to it.

So far, at least, I haven't found a way to tell my kind of stories without making them both sad and funny.

I mean, there are many other directors who are probably both more skilled and excited to adapt novels or work within certain genre conventions. I'd like to do that kind of work someday, but for better or worse I'm too drawn by my own material.

I think success is a lot more healthy than failure.

When I want to show the kind of meanness people are capable of, to make it believable I find I have to tone it down. It's in real life that people are over the top.

I mean, I don't want to sound - of course it's very nice, people come up and say appreciative things about my work. But the loss, in terms of privacy and anonymity, is no small thing to me.