It's terrible to write what are essentially comedies for people with no sense of humor. Everyone thinks they have a sense of humor, but observably not.

So something I've felt I've learned with The Cosmopolitans shoot is using some agility and changing things quickly. That's something I found really useful on this shoot too. The gestation of The Cosmopolitans and this are slightly different from my other films. The script would be done and I'd be cutting it, but I wasn't always writing new material.

[Jerome David] Salinger was really taken to the cleaners by nasty critics in his day. I think Joan Didion was one of the people who attacked him in a very unfair way.

For me, the present is a golden era. That's the greatest golden era. Right now. I just like pining for lost times.

I think Austin is read more now than Charles Dickens, and Dickens was much more popular in his day. She endures because of her classicism.

For me, there's a bad year of getting started on something. You write bad stuff and it's awkward to throw it out, and you wait around to get some good ideas that maybe do come or don't come. Until eventually you get the voice and autonomy of the characters, the characters have personality, and they sort of pick up the weight and put it on their shoulders. That's when it becomes a little more fun.

It's terrible to write what are essentially comedies for people with no sense of humor. Everyone thinks they have a sense of humor, but observably not.