I was 12 or 13 years old. So I started to write poetry and fiction, even though I was really into biology because my dad was a science teacher. I kept writing all those years.

Comic books and graphic novels are a great medium. It's incredibly underused.

Turning 30 was when my parents both got cancer and were fighting it and beat it, but their mortality started to get to me. Everything wasn't as hunky-dory like it was.

As filmmakers, we can show where a person's mind goes, as opposed to theater, which is more to sit back and watch it.

I had some big ups and downs when I was in my 20s and the one thing I learned was, no matter how low it gets, something good will come along - something always comes out of that dark period.

I think it's important as a filmmaker, as any person working in the arts, that you've got to try new stuff and challenge yourself and take chances.

I couldn't sleep one night and I was sitting in my office and I realized that I was an independent filmmaker.

I'm Godless. I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking

Every film had its own grammar. And it's your job as a director to basically figure out a language to tell a story.

At the end of Requiem all I wanted to do was get a DV camera and just do a small film. But then the hunger comes back.

I hope that Requiem is better than Pi. I hope that Pi is better than my student films, and I'm hoping that I'm getting better as I get older.

It's impossible to go through life unscathed. Nor should you want to. By the hurts we accumulate, we measure both our follies and our accomplishments.

We seek to find peace of mind in the word, the formula, the ritual. The hope is illusion.

It did not seem as if a prop were withdrawn, but rather as if a motive were gone: it was not the power to be tranquil which had failed me, but the reason for tranquility was no more.

A good stylist knows that and is not going to push you to wear something that you're not comfortable with.

He treasured her, treasured her tears, treasured her love for others. Her heart might even be big enough to fill that empty space in his own chest. Perhaps she could be his heart as well.

Sometimes it's a short step from banning to burning.

Women are sort of like motorcycle gangs with me. They get really shy and polite. I don't know why.

Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind.

The great blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and, like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it.

We do not write what we know; we write what we want to find out.