“Don’t write what you think people want to read. Find your voice and write about what’s in your heart.”

I try not to get analytical in the writing process. I try to just kind of keep the flow from my brain to my hand as far as the pen is concerned and go with the moment and go with my guts.

One thing I don’t understand is that average American movie-goers cannot watch a movie for three hours, yet they’ll watch a stupid, boring, horrific football game for four hours. Now, that is boredom at its most colossal.

I’ve always considered myself a filmmaker who writes stuff for himself to do.

I don’t judge my characters, and that’s my job not to judge them. It’s my job to treat them with respect and to just look at it from their point of view.

My only obligation is to my characters. And they came from where I have been.

You don’t have to know how to make a movie. If you truly love cinema with all your heart and with enough passion, you can’t help but make a good movie.

I steal from every movie ever made.

My parents said, Oh, he’s going to be a director someday. I wanted to be an actor.

If I’m doing my job right, then I’m not writing the dialogue; the characters are saying the dialogue, and I’m just jotting it down.

If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.

I don’t believe in putting in music as a band aid to get you over some rough parts or bad film making. If it’s there it’s got to add to it or take it to another level.

Particularly as a writer, it is my job to ignore social critics, or the response that social critics might have when it comes to the opinions of my characters, the way they talk, or anything that can happen to them.

If you just love movies enough, you can make a good one.

I have loved movies as the number one thing in my life so long that I can’t ever remember a time when I didn’t.

It’s nice to get invited to the parties and to be able to hobnob and celebrate a job well done with your colleagues.

In real life there are no bad guys. Everybody just has their own perspective.

He was healthier than the rest of us, but when you listened with the stethoscope you could hear the tears bubbling inside his heart.

The spirit of her invincible heart guided her through the shadows.

For my heart is always with Him, day and night it thinks unceasingly of its heavenly and divine Friend, to whom it wants to prove its affection. Also within it arises this desire: not to die, but to suffer long, to suffer for God, to give Him its life while praying for poor sinners.

You venture into the unknown land because that is where your heart will take you. In the end, it is not what you want to do, it is something you have to do.

Right from the start, you were a thief, you stole my heart.

A heart without love is a bow without an arrow.

It does not matter how great the pressure is. What really matters is where the pressure lies — whether it comes between you and God, or whether it presses you nearer His heart.

Heartbreak does not have to be a meaningless experience. For many, it is a spiritual catalyst – a pathway to awakening to ones deepest desires for love, purpose and connection.