If somebody asks me about the themes of something I'm working on, I never have any idea what the themes are. . . . Somebody tells me the themes later. I sort of try to avoid developing themes. I want to just keep it a little bit more abstract. But then, what ends up happening is, they say, 'Well, I see a lot here that you did before, and it's connected to this other movie you did,' and . . . that almost seems like something I don't quite choose. It chooses me.

There's no story if there isn't some conflict. The memorable things are usually not how pulled together everybody is. I think everybody feels lonely and trapped sometimes. I would think it's more or less the norm.

I have a way of filming things and staging them and designing sets. There were times when I thought I should change my approach, but in fact, this is what I like to do. It's sort of like my handwriting as a movie director. And somewhere along the way, I think I've made the decision: I'm going to write in my own handwriting.

I just want to make films that are personal, but interesting to an audience.

People often call and say: "Can you help me to get Bill Murray in our movie." But I'm always like, "well I don't know how to do that!" I've sometimes tried and not been able to get him but then I'll suddenly be very surprised by the thing that he will suddenly decide to do.

Sometimes when you're editing a movie, you have the thing that you don't expect - which is you make it longer and longer as you go along.

Some of the ideas are kind of inspired by the songs, and I always want to use music to tell the story and give the movie a certain kind of mood. That's always essential to me.