If you're not optimistic on some level, then you've given up.

You should always do the things in life that are both interesting and make you afraid.

My job as an artist, as I see it, is to understand and in some cases to take on various ways of thinking about people and the world that are different from my own, sometimes radically different.

Every year I hear people complain that the quality of screenplays and movies is declining. In my opinion, the vast majority of scripts written - as well as most movies that are released - are not very original, well-written, or interesting. It has always been that way, and I think it always will be.

The efforts of Black Lives Matter to bring attention to the all-too-frequent instances of unjustified violence being used by policemen may not be paying off as quickly as some might hope.

I think that people who get to a certain position, and then try to ferociously defend it or build on it, it's kind of a dead-end street. You see people becoming miserable that way.

I try to research or make up for myself what happened in any character's life. From when he was born until the first page of the script. I fill in the blanks.