It's not usually that great of an idea to read lots of reviews of your movies, because even if somebody's saying nice things, there'll still be something in there that pushes the wrong button, and it's not really that helpful.

I love working with actors. That's what the set really is, for me. It's my time with the actors.

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.

The subject of an outsider who becomes obsessed.

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.

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.

My experience with casting children is that... the whole movie is going to rest on their shoulders, so you have to set aside time and wait for the perfect people to appear.