“You can’t run forever.”

I tend to not write for a long period of time until I can’t not write, and then I write first drafts in gallops.

And now we have all this access to public transportation, automobiles and jets and the Internet

You want the tension to escalate. Keeping them there is the hardest part, so you have to take away any excuse for them to leave.

There’s only so much pavement that the road makers lay down. After a while, the highway quits going north and it just turns into sky.

The heart fills with warm rain that turns to mist and evaporates through a colder artery.

In Chekhov, when people leave, a carriage is taking them away forever.

Fifteen years ago I killed my sister.

Somewhere so deep inside that the doctors can’t find it with all their machines and microcameras.

It’s strange, people have asked me what my schedule is and what is my process like, and I can’t even answer it.

I think auditioning can be very reductive and I just hate how actors work really hard and most of them aren’t going to get the job, and I hate putting them through that.

I don’t like the sort of hierarchical, totalitarian type of room a lot of directors can find themselves in.

The rooms I tend to be in are pretty democratic and the best idea wins.

Ice congeals in the stomach. Frost spiderwebs in the lungs.

I think there is a complicated side effect to overcoming evil in that we are forever changed by it.

I show up on time, I am very rigorous about scheduling, and I am very focused.

What I’ve learned in the last few years is that I am merely a storyteller.

Personally, I don’t think the film and television industries are run as well as they used to be. Oh sure, we’ve got great digital effects now but… where are the visionaries?

In the long run, it costs more to provide poor rather than good service.

Perspective is what allows us to step back and see the entire forest instead of just the same old tree we keep running into again and again.

Alcohol is like anything else. It’s only as bad as the person it’s being poured into. If it’s used to heighten an occasion, or to take an edge off stress, I don’t see a problem.

Food made by hand is an act of defiance and runs contrary to everything in our modernity. Find it; eat it; it will go. It has been around for millennia. Now it is evanescent, like a season.

I’m from a middle class family but my father squandered all the money, so I didn’t really run around with rich people. I was very judgmental towards a lot of them.

Several of my critics have said, ‘Bowerman just tacks up a piece of paper in the locker room and turns his runners loose.’ They’re partially right. I do give the athletes a relatively free rein and for good reason. One of my principles is? ‘Don’t overcoach.’

Advent: the time to listen for footsteps – you can’t hear footsteps when you’re running yourself.