Quotes

Everyone has expectations. You just don't want to have them dashed, so you're quiet about them.

It really shocks me when I encounter people who think kindness doesn't matter. Because I think it's pretty much the only thing that matters.

We're like a gardener with a hose and our attention is water - we can water flowers or we can water weeds.

Cynicism is kind of like folding your arms and stepping back and commenting on things, like the old guys in 'The Muppets,' just throwing out comments all the time, whereas there are other people on the ground really trying to affect things and improve their lives and the lives of other people. I think it's noble and I think it's cool.

It's not our job to play judge and jury, to determine who is worthy of our kindness and who is not. We just need to be kind, unconditionally and without ulterior motive, even - or rather, especially - when we'd prefer not to be.

An obsessive attention to the news, I've realized, only serves to paint a picture of the world as a throbbing blob of dysfunction, most news falling somewhere on a scale from disappointing to calamitous.

A movie can and should have some real dissonance throughout - rage, heartache, tears, conflict, catharsis and all the other elements Aristotle demanded of a good story - but the chord has to be resolved.

One man's uplift is another man's sentimental hooey.

Kindness is not about instant gratification. More often, it's akin to a low-risk investment that appreciates steadily over time.

I distinguish sentiment from sentimentality. Sentimentality makes your skin crawl. It's like too much sugar. But, sentiment is a great feeling.

Even though I occasionally appear on it, I don't watch television.

As a person, I'm anti-violence.

All of the things I used to obsess over, I'm no longer as obsessed with. I have new concerns but they're a little more existential or cosmic.

Acting on stage is still my favorite thing to do. And everyone who's been in musicals knows that there is nothing more fun.

I haven't left the house without a packet of Kleenex in my back pocket for as long as I can remember. Whenever I start thinking I'm incredibly cool, the packet of Kleenex in my back pocket brings me right back down to earth.

I kicked college nostalgia in my late 20s. As much as I loved college and treasure the memories, I no longer want to go back.

I have really good female friends. I've never bought the whole men-and-women-can't-be-friends thing. I think that's sort of nonsense.

I care about reading, a lot. It's a big part of my life.

I actually have a thing about proper nouns. They clang on my ear in a weird way when I hear them dropped into movies.

Film allows me to ask some really big questions with the time to explore them deeply. I love the form.

I went through this very serious Woody Allen phase in college and a little bit after college. I still see his movies.

I tend to read things that are a little more on the nourishing side. But if I don't enjoy something, I'll put it down.

I sometimes don't know what I'm writing when I start writing it, on some level.

I like movies that are about real people in real time with real problems.

I learned a lesson which I didn't heed: Don't put yourself in your movies. It's too much.

No matter how dark things may get in a story, I feel it's the responsibility of the storyteller to leave the audience with at least a shred of hope.

My trick is the trick that everyone knows: Work really hard and prepare.

It's really hard to be poor in New York - I was really poor when I lived in New York.

It never made sense to me that someone would achieve any kind of success in show business, only to become a jerk.

In college, you're kind of designing who you want to be. And I wanted to be a big reader.

We don't have a lot of space in our imaginations to allow people to expand what they do.

We are so vocal about what we hate.

Time off from the news is always something I welcome.

There are just things you can explore in a movie that you can't in 22 minutes with a laugh track.

The reflexive allergy to L.A. that a lot of New Yorkers have, I feel like it's kind of nonsense.

A lot of times, we're just sold these movies that are really cynically conceived and marketed, and they just want you there opening weekend, before everybody finds out it's not so good.

There's something melancholy about professors because they're chronically abandoned. They form these lovely relationships with students and then the students leave and the professors stay the same. It's like they're chronically abandoned.

If I'm feeling something, I have a lot of different ways to express it, you know? I can write an article about it. I can write a screenplay about it. I can act in someone's thing.

Here's the problem: I don't like who I've become when my iPhone is within reach. I find myself checking e-mails and responding to texts throughout the day with some kind of Pavlovian ferocity - it's not a conscious act, but a reflexive one.

What I write is very personal, but not autobiographical. It's more 'thematically personal' - what's up in my life in terms of themes at the moment.

I find myself going out less and less. When you're 22 and see older people start to do that, it's depressing, but once you hit 30, you think, 'Wow, I've been working all week - it might be really nice to stay in!'

I don't think evil people or negative people are inherently interesting all the time. People who are good people getting better at being themselves - to me, that's something that's really interesting to watch.

But, yeah, I'm really happy when I'm writing. When I'm being creative and when I have something that I can put down. You know, if you go out and you overhear a conversation or you have a thought, you have a receptacle to go home and say, 'Oh, this would be great in this script.' Your antenna's out in a different way, and I love that time.

And as a filmmaker, I'm trying to unhook myself from this idea that unless you have a brilliant, long, enormously lucrative theatrical run, that your movie somehow failed. And I don't believe that.

After a brief period in which I had let many a Southern Californian convince me that it was all 'in my mind,' I am once again officially allergic to dogs.

I'm a little less hungry as an actor than I used to be. When you're a director, you're the conductor of the orchestra, and when you're an actor, you're playing the violin. There's a thrill to each of them, but as the conductor, you get the fuller sound.

I'll say this, and this has nothing to do with gender or sexuality: You do not want to get licked in the face repeatedly by another human being. You just don't. It's not pleasant.

I think the word 'earnest' kind of has a negative connotation on some level. I think one of the things that's happened is that being cynical is somehow conflated with being sophisticated. I think that's problematic, to say the least.

I think that the mark of a great book is that it will meet you wherever you're at and you'll feel and experience something new and different each time you read it.

I know not everyone starts out reading high literature. If you read enough you might be drawn to some other things, so maybe those vampire books are what they call 'gateway books.' I just coined that term. I don't know if there's a thing called 'gateway books.'