“My work is always more emotional than I am.”

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.

For me, now, working and children is it. Theres nothing more to life.

Become more and more attractive and impressive, and you see that in fact they are beautiful. Not conventionally beautiful, not celebrity beautiful, but beautiful all through.

There’s no such thing as “fixed” culture. China is also becoming more global. Its problems are becoming international problems, becoming German problems, becoming American problems.

Once you’ve tasted freedom, it stays in your heart and no one can take it. Then, you can be more powerful than a whole country.

Life is much more interesting when you make a little bit of effort.

It became like a symbolic thing, to be “an artist.” After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.

Growing up, my family was an enemy of the state. I have experienced more disappointment than joy, much more sad stories or desperate conditions.

This world should be much more open and should be much more free, so the young people would have the chance to exercise the quality of their lives.