Director

The concept of 'family' has changed so much. It's not just 'mom and dad' anymore. It's 'mom and mom' and 'dad and dad,' and it's kind of beautiful.

I can't stand toe-to-toe with Bill Murray. It's very hard, because just looking at Bill - he's 6'3, and he just stares at you, and you have no idea what's going on inside that mind of his.

One thing that's nice about doing a movie about people that hardly anyone knows, you never worry if they're a perfect match.

As a director, you're open to any kind of criticism.

You know what the truth is? You don't find Bill Murray. Bill Murray finds you.

We're very, very flawed, myself included.

I try not to write for actors because A, they're not the character, and B, it's really depressing when you don't get them.

The fact is this: NASA was desegregated by a white male. NASA was not desegregated by a black male. NASA was not desegregated by white women.

To me, there are saints every day. They stand up and help others and live for others and do things for others.

My wife says I have happy delusions. I'm delusional that way. I just say, 'This is how it's got to be, and it's got to be.' I don't take no. I just don't like no. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. That's just how I am.

If you don't have comedy in a movie, you don't have a movie.

I have a very strict philosophy that if you're not working out, you're getting fat.

NASA didn't give a crap what gender you were or what race you were. If you could do the math, you were valuable.

I think if characters change too much, it's unrealistic; their whole fabric of who they are as a person doesn't just disappear.

People live in the middle. I think everyone does. Good is on one side, bad is on the other side, and we live in the middle.

I grew up in Brooklyn, in what I now know was poverty. Sharing a tiny bedroom with my two brothers, eating government cheese and passing down sneakers until they were unpassable... I simply thought the whole world lived as such, especially in pre-gentrified Williamsburg of the 1980s.

If you don't infuse humor into a subject matter, no matter how dark, the audience can't accept the message of a film. It closes them down. Humor can open them up.

Floyd Thompson, a white man, desegregated NASA. Period.

I have to shoot and work out and play and discover all the time.

By the time I got to 'St Vincent,' I had shot so many scenarios I was ready for anything - I've shot kangaroos, I've shot dogs, cats, crowds, fight scenes, stunts, comedy, drama, handheld, dolly, helicopter, crane - I just felt that there was nothing I was unprepared for.