As a kid, I had a background in theater.
I think if I've worked anything through with screenwriting it's that I'm not going to be able to work anything through.
I have ideas written down some places, but usually I can't find them. I'm not very organized.
Seriously, I don't consider myself a writer. I don't think I have writing talent. But I will continue to do it.
I think I've had pretty good experiences for the most part with the people who have directed my screenplays.
In a lot of movies, especially big studio ones, they're not constructed in any other way than to get people to like them and then tell their friends. It's a product.
Sand is overrated. It's just tiny little rocks.
I know that as a very young child, I was afraid of death. Many children become aware of the notion of death early and it can be a very troubling thing. We're all in this continuum: I'm this age now, and if I live long enough I'll be that age. I was 20 once, I was 10, I was 4. People who are 20 now will be 50 one day. They don't know that! They know it in the abstract, but they don't know it. I'd like them to know it, because I think it gives you compassion.
We try to organize the world, which isn't organized the way our brains want to organize it. We tell stories about the people in our lives, we project ideas onto them. We project relationships with people, we make our lives into stories. I don't think we can avoid doing that.
Why do I fall in love with every woman I see that shows me the least bit of attention?
I've had to deal, a lot, with my own sense of intimidation at meeting famous people - especially actors, but really any famous people.
She was nice. Nice is good.
I think if something resonates, even if it's surreal, it's because it is relatable and I think that that's a core issue for me.
I think generally I'm kind of interested in subjective experience, what goes on inside someone's head, that being all they really know of the world.
I can talk endlessly about characters, or why someone did this or that, and what that dynamic and interaction is. I really love it, and I think that actors really respond positively to the fact that I like to talk about that stuff, because I'm not sure that all directors do.
I can never watch anything I've been involved in, because I know it, and I know what the making of it was like, and I know what's been cut out and changed. I just know it.
I hate a movie that will end by telling you that the first thing you should do is learn to love yourself. That is so insulting and condescending, and so meaningless. My characters don't learn to love each other or themselves.
I'm old enough, by a long shot, to remember going to the library and spending days researching. If I was looking for a line from a poem or something else I needed, that would be the trip I would have to take.
I don't subscribe to anything. I sit there and I try to think about what seems honest to me.
I like actors - I used to be one.
I don't write genre stuff in any form. I'm not interested in it. I always try to do the opposite of that.
The sad thing about working on a movie is that you can never see the movie.
I don't have a style. I wouldn't say I have a style as a writer, either. I know people have said "This is what he does," but when I'm writing, I don't think about that. I don't think about a style.
I wanted to deal with someone's idea of their relationship.
Sometimes I don't like the books that I'm reading.
