When the father dies, he writes, the son becomes his own father and his own son. He looks at is son and sees himself in the face of the boy. He imagi….

The kind of fiction I'm trying to write is about telling the truth..

Stories surge up out of nowhere, and if they feel compelling, you follow them. You let them unfold inside you and see where they are going to lead..

I never experiment with anything in my books. Experimentation means you don't know what you're doing..

It always stimulates me to discover new examples of my own prejudice and stupidity, to realize that I don't know half as much as I think I do..

Novels are fictions and therefore they tell lies, but through those lies every novelist attempts to tell the truth about the world..

People say you have to travel to see the world. Sometimes I think that if you just stay in one place and keep your eyes open, you're going to see jus….

What used to keep me up at night was the fact that I didn't know how I was going to pay the rent. Now that I can pay the rent, I'm worrying about peo….

Even you, who’ve lived inside your body for 64 years, would apparently be unable to recognize your foot in an isolated photograph of that foot, not t….

Just think it, and chances are it will happen..

Cities - I'm attracted to them, and I have a special attachment to New York...it's my place..

I was extremely shy. And I simply didn't know how to go about it. It seemed a lot easier to write than to make films. All I needed was a pencil and a….

When every card in the deck is stacked against you, the only way to win a hand is to break the rules. You beg, borrow, and steal, as the old adage go….

I don't like talking about my work at all. I find it very difficult. I never know what to say. It's too close to me, and there's so many things happe….

It seems to me that I will always be happy in the place where I am not..

Money's important. Everyone cares about money. And when you don't have money, money becomes the overriding obsession of your life..

He no longer wished to be dead. At the same time, it cannot be said that he was glad to be alive. But at least he did not resent it. He was alive, an….

The childhood scenes [ in The Tree of Life] are tremendous. My favorite moment is when the mother levitate - for three seconds. Of course, this is ho….

Farts come from no one and nowhere; they are anonymous emanations that belong to the group as a whole, and even when every person in the room can poi….

I say at the very end of "Winter Journal" that I do dream about my father often. I think I have a tremendous compassion for him, which has grown over….

It often happens that things are other than what they seem, and you can get yourself into trouble by jumping to conclusions..