You always have to be ahead of the audience so that they have to always catch up and know the movie's not quite going exactly where you think it's going, or expecting it to be going.

We say we embrace humanity, but what does that mean? We are all defined by our limits, so to what extent can we embrace all this? Because we all contain within ourselves equally the capacity for kindness, as much as for cruelty or evil. And the best of us are able to suppress those baser impulses, instincts. That's the war within.

The ability to take pleasure in one's life is a skill and is a kind of intelligence. So intelligence is a hard thing to evaluate and it manifests itself in so many different ways. I do think the ability to know how to live a life and not be miserable is a sign of that.

Some directors hardly talk to the actors at all.

Every time you try to make another movie, you never know what will come of it. I can't say it ever gets easier, but it is in it's own way gratifying. I think that because no one movie that you make ever quite satisfies you, you're always feeling, "Next time I can get it right."

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

All I mean is, I'm not the kind of audience comedy directors want at a test screening because I seldom laugh, and if I do, it's not very loud. That doesn't mean I don't like the movie.