Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I feel cool when I say I live in Brooklyn.
I think it's a fantastic thing to be alive.
I wanted to direct long before I'd even written a screenplay.
There is nothing more depressing than toast that no one eats.
Harold and Maude' is a film I just keep finding myself rewatching.
I feel like there's a certain kind of laughter missing in the world.
New York just feels real to me, and not everyone is in the movie business.
I want to write stories that don't help you escape life, but embrace life.
I'm interested in stories that help me, people navigate in this broken world.
I don't want to write my life. I live my life. I want to make up a new world.
One of the great kicks of having a movie made is that you envision this world.
Writing a really good screenplay is not easy. It can be a very punishing form.
I used to find limitations frustrating, but I find them enormously liberating.
Over the course of my creative life, I've trafficked in broken, heroic mothers.
I learned early on that there are all sorts of stories I have no place telling.
I've always had an acute sense of mortality, maybe because my father's a minister.
The Orpheus myth is my favorite myth, and the prodigal son is my favorite parable.
I spent so many years trying to become an actor, trying to be a person that I wasn't.
Maudlin scenes where people pour their heart out to one another? I don't want to see it.
I want to make accessible movies for bright people, but I don't want to play games and be coy.
The better the script, the less money there is. That's just the economics of the studio system.
Is my job as a child, even as an adult, is my job to heal the wounds of my parents' childhoods?
I completely hold on to the idea that people are eager if not desperate to be told a good story.
If there's a photo of a roomful of kids I'm the one with the biggest smile or my hand over my face.
Something happened to me when I wrote female characters in my early plays; it was a real liberation.
I wouldn't say I'm a religious person, but I am definitely inclined toward asking the big questions.
A novel is challenging, because you have more story than you need and you have to select and narrow.
You could cast nearly any movie in Brooklyn, and now you can film in Brooklyn - for you have studios.
My older son works in finance and private equity, which he loves, and Lucas works in film and theater.
I make sure when I direct that it's a very joy-based set that hopefully is filled with a lot of respect.
I think the best dramas are as funny as possible and the best comedies have, underneath them, real substance.
I've read both books that 'Beautiful Boy' is based on, and I can't wait to see that film. I root for that film.
I love films that take place over a short period of time, and I feel that those films are in our cinematic DNA.
In my family, if something were to have happened with one of my kids, I think my wife would be the tougher one.
So much of writing is about what characters don't say, and in the early drafts, sometimes things get overwritten.
So, yes, I wrote a script called 'Ben Is Back' that I got to make with a bunch of remarkable artists and craftspeople.
People love conversation, and movies are conversations, and an audience has to participate; it has to fill in some blanks.
Lucas is living the life that I wanted, but I want to be clear, I don't feel there's been any pressure for him to live it.
I play this game with my son called Never Seen. We try to see new things every day, and we do. I don't take that for granted.
My job as a dramatist is to find out where these characters want to go, and make it as hard as possible for them to get there.
If you get back into the beginner mindset, you can unearth an energy and a fire that I didn't know I could even still possess.
There's no reason that a writer, if they have some discipline and curiosities and passion, can't be vital for a long, long time.
Ultimately what I try to do is work on stories I love with people I admire, and sometimes they get made and sometimes they don't.
Black people are more likely to be incarcerated than white people. That's just a fact and it's regrettable and it's got to change.
I can't stop terrorism; I can't cure cancer. But I can put some stories out there in their own quiet way that talk about tolerance.
The bigger the budget, the less an audience is trusted, and that's the difference between a big-budget film and a small-budget film.
The most autobiographical thing I've ever written is my second novel, called 'An Ocean in Iowa.' That is pretty close to my childhood.
I don't know anything about directing, but if you love actors, know your story and hire a great company, then anyone can direct a film.
Family is paramount to me in my life, and my own comes first above everything, and that's something universal that people can relate to.
I've wanted to direct for a long time, but it had to be a story I wanted to tell. The writer's job is to find the story that he should tell.