Director

A lot of times, you have an idea, and all the things you are thinking about might fuel it. But that's not where the idea came from.

If I leave my phone in the car and go to dinner or something for a few hours, I'm very proud of myself.

I guess a lot of things I make are relationship movies. Maybe all movies are relationship movies, because they're all about how we relate to each other.

I'm not one to intellectualize why I did something.

Obviously, movies and music videos are different because they're different lengths, and in a movie, you have more time to explore an idea. But I feel like they're all the same, really.

Writing is hard.

There were times in 'Adaptation' during the editing where I really thought, 'Okay, well, this was a noble failure. I tried to do something good, but this is not going to work.'

Obviously technology has become such a big presence in our lives and, I definitely know, in my life.

Johnny Knoxville went from struggling to pay his rent to being on the cover of 'Rolling Stone' in the course of, like, a month.

Obviously technology has become such a big presence in our lives and, I definitely know, in my life.

Our subjectivity is so completely our own.

If you focus your energy on the camera, it takes away from the time you have to focus on the performances.

There are a lot of kids in the world. People seem to keep having them.

I would love to make video games.

I'm fortunately not, like, typecast. I don't have to just do one kind of thing; I can do all kinds of things that reflect different parts of me.

Maurice Sendak never - I remember he said something that was very striking because it's something I never thought about. I always loved his work, and he said, 'I don't really view myself as a children's book author. I just try and write about childhood as honestly as I can.'

I'm always amazed when any actor can decipher my direction.

I think the thing that is meaningful is when I can tell that someone's been affected by the movie or by anything I made.

Emotions are messy and hard to figure out.

As a director, you never get to watch other directors work, and you also don't get to collaborate with other directors that much.