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.

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.

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.

Any romantic feelings for a 12-year-old are like entering into a fantasy world.

I want to try not to repeat myself. But then I seem to do it continuously in my films. It's not something I make any effort to do. I just want to make films that are personal, but interesting to an audience. I feel I get criticized for style over substance, and for details that get in the way of the characters. But every decision I make is how to bring those characters forward.

And I wanted to do a movie [Moonrise Kingdom] about a childhood romance - a very powerful experience of childhood romance. About what it's like to just be blindsided, when you're in fifth grade or sixth grade, by these kinds of feelings. Along the way, I sort of mixed in some interest in "young adult fantasy" writing.

Anytime I make a movie, I really have absolutely no idea how it's going to go over. I've had the whole range of different kinds of reactions.