Screenwriter

I tend to not only read reviews, but also every little stupid thing online. It's a very bad idea, and there's a lot of angry people in the world. And it's weird to absorb all that weirdness.

I think if I've worked anything through with screenwriting it's that I'm not going to be able to work anything through.

Sometimes I don't like the books that I'm reading.

I think that people have expectations of themselves and other people that are based on these fictions that are presented to them as the way human life and relationships could be, in some sort of weird, ideal world, but they never are. So you're constantly being shown this garbage and you can't get there.

I feel like I want to keep moving toward idiosyncracy. Personal, personal, personal.

I've had to deal, a lot, with my own sense of intimidation at meeting famous people - especially actors, but really any famous people.

I actually think I'm probably more interested in structure than most people who write screenplays, because I think about it.

I try to make things interesting and thought-provoking.

Directing is a more pragmatic experience, where you have to deal with the restrictions of time and money that force you to make certain decisions you don't have to make when you're writing.

You are what you love. Not what loves you.

We try to organize the world, which isn't organized the way our brains want to organize it. We tell stories about the people in our lives, we project ideas onto them. We project relationships with people, we make our lives into stories. I don't think we can avoid doing that.

I studied acting at Boston University. I was in the theater department there. Somewhere in there I decided that wasn't what I was going to do and I went to the B.F.A. film program at N.Y.U.

I want to create situations that give people something to think about.

I think I've had pretty good experiences for the most part with the people who have directed my screenplays.

I'm old enough, by a long shot, to remember going to the library and spending days researching. If I was looking for a line from a poem or something else I needed, that would be the trip I would have to take.

I really don't have any solutions and I don't like movies that do.

I'm trying to tell a story and do it truthfully.

I like titles that are a little difficult, because it's kind of counterintuitive.

I don't subscribe to anything. I sit there and I try to think about what seems honest to me.

If you create something that is asking for people to respond as they're going to respond, you have to allow them to respond as they're going to respond. Some of the people are going to be uninterested and some people are going to be mad for some reason, which is their business. That's just the way the world is.