How you start the movie is critical. And how often you feel that there's no reason for how it's starting.

Defining yourself by your taste is easier than defining yourself by any genuine stance on something.

As a kid, I thought of myself as a funny person who secretly wanted to be serious, but now I think maybe I'm a serious person who secretly wants to be funny.

When you find yourself on the Internet when you're supposed to be writing, you've already lost. It's even beyond procrastination when you end up on the Internet.

A film set becomes its own family anyway, and all family dynamics come out during a shoot. The trick is hiring people who know how to handle that.

We expect forty-year-olds to have grown up at some point, and to be engaged and adult and take responsibility, and doing nothing would seem to go against that.

I feel a real connection to Brooklyn, certainly, because I spent 20 years of my life there, but I don't think of myself as a Brooklyn artist any more than I think of myself as a male artist.

Peter Bogdanovich is a good friend.

It's kind of major, learning to drive. I feel like it kicked up other stuff in my life.

Being funny, in some ways, is about being connected to psychology.

I always viewed life as material for a movie.

Knowledge is the food of the soul.

Ceaseless.Almost too much for this small frame.You make me part of the sky.

Perhaps they never die at all. I quite believe that myself, and it is a comfort, don't you think? That there is a place where no one ever grows old?

Knowledge cannot defile nor consequently the books if the will and conscience be not defiled.

One hair of a woman can draw more than a hundred pair of oxen.

If you have no soul you can gut it out. You know, like a marionette, you'll just follow what seems to actually give you whatever you ain't got.

You want to be as dominant as possible and you want to put some doubt in the hitters' heads. That's what I'm trying to do every single time I'm on the mound.

Writing responds well to some gentle scheduling. A day job not only promotes solvency, it promotes creativity as well.

The pearl whose possession separates man from beast, the pearl which is the rarest find - the best among virtues - is forgiveness.

I'm not flailing now, as my muscles are rigid with the tension of holding myself together.