It happens sometimes that when someone has a camera, they change; sometimes they change for the better..

From making documentaries all these years, it doesn't feel right to lead someone. In narratives, I'm always trying to shoot as though it's really hap….

You can never maintain just pure happiness. In my life, I want full emotion. I want equal parts happiness and sadness..

Sidney Lumet is one of my favorite filmmakers. I feel like his approach to filmmaking was always so human. He was always making movies about the peop….

I love crosscut parallel storytelling, like we did in Blue Valentine. I love how Alejandro González Iñárritu has done it, and Quentin Tarantino, and ….

I've had to cut my mom out of a movie before - it's ruthless, editing. But it's also so necessary; because once you start taking away, it's like scul….

I feel like the job in editing is to let the movie tell you what it is. It's like sculpture. You just start taking away, you add a nose here, you cut….

I don't really collect anything. I grew up in a family that collected things and then they'd get sick and people die and then they have their basemen….

Yeah as the director I consider myself to be the coach, and my actors are my players. So I have to show them how committed I am, but I also want to l….

So I don't think being an artist you can ever satisfy - the moment you do get satisfied is the moment you're done, really. I'm actually starting to b….

There's something so glorious in giving control to the world. I think that's what I'm trying to do in my films-control the world but also let it be c….

I'm so sick of seeing guns in movies, and all this violence; and if there was going to be violence in Pines, I wanted it to actually be narrative vio….

I want to get out of the way of the actors. I want to get out of their eye lines. I want to them to stop thinking they're making a movie. I want them….

A lawyer actually has to see all sides of a situation. Lawyers actually might be the most understanding human beings..

Making a film is like making a mixtape. You're collecting all this stuff and putting your favorite stuff into it: you have actors that you like, char….

I always say writing is like dreaming, shooting is like living, and editing is like murder, because you take all these gifts that actors give you, an….

There's one rule that I have on my movies, which is that anything that you want to do, you can do. But! There's a flip side to that, which is that an….

I tell the actors that the biggest gift they can give me is to fail. And that the second gift they can give me is to surprise me..

When I made my student film, a feature, nobody wanted to talk to me and I was, like, in the desert for 12 years..