Melodrama and melodramatic are not the same thing, and often people make the mistake of confusing the two.

I remember as a little kid, I would always feel comfortable if the light in the crack of my parents' door was on at night. When it went off, that meant they were asleep. Then that terror and the fear of being by myself started to creep in.

For me, I get a part of an idea here and a little bit of an idea there, and then finally it accumulates into a movie.

I had written 'Two Lovers' before we started shooting 'We Own the Night.'

I feel that The American Dream is this fallacy that you come to the United States and win lotto. That's a disservice to The American Dream because the American Dream is worth striving for. And it's not easy.

The ending shot of 'Queen Christina' with Greta Garbo is amazing. She's at the head of the ship, and she's been through so much, and the camera gets so close to her face. That really sticks out for me.

The life of a film is very strange. Once the film is done, you wish you could forget about it and move on.

When I was younger, I felt it essential to see every movie ever made. Now I feel as though I've got to read every book, see every art show, watch every play and opera and concert and so on. It does not end, and of course there is truth in the old cliche that the more one knows, the more one realizes one knows nothing at all.

I have no interest whatsoever in pursuing acting or becoming a mogul. I love writing and directing; I see those two jobs as the most critical in the making of a film.

I grew up in a semi-attached row house in Queens in New York. And my family and my grandparents and my father's from Brooklyn, and so you're essentially an outer boroughs kid, you're growing up.

It's difficult because Manhattan is so fantastic, and it's 9 miles away, and all these cool rich people live there and have great lives, and you live in a semi-attached row house in Queens.

The opera in Los Angeles is excellent.

Americans have always been excellent at making romantic comedies - but dramatically, we don't really try to do it.

There are very few movies in English about romantic obsession told with a seriousness of purpose.

I've been a Yankees fan for a long time. When I was a kid in the mid-'70s, the Yankees were really great. They had Reggie Jackson in '77. I was 8 years old at the time. He hit three home runs to win the World Series in game six against the Dodgers, and I was just hooked.

Baseball is the greatest thing in the world.

I have no athletic skills whatsoever. I'm just literally incompetent.

It's much easier to make a movie with kind of stylistic pyrotechnics because you can hide behind that if there's a gap in the story.

All I can say is sometimes home gets burned into your occipital lobe, and it can't leave you, and there's always that longing.

The films I grew up loving, and the art that I love, is not generally the kind of postmodern ironic winking stuff. What lasts is the stuff in which the artists are totally in league with the subject.

I've learned that you can never predict what will happen to a film. You can never predict if people will love it, if they'll hate it. It's an act of ego if you're hoping for everyone to love the film and tell you how great you are.

I would love it if my films made a lot of money, and may I say that 'The Yards' is the only one that's lost money.

I don't think my parents told me enough how the world doesn't really care about me. I think it's important to tell children that the world doesn't really care about you. You have to fight to be heard.

I think to be a movie critic is troubling from one major respect. If you are forced to watch ten movies a week, it's really only something you can do for a few years. After a while, it's a bit too much.

I don't envy the job of people who have to watch five movies a day - that's insane.

The state of being in love is so inherently preposterous. It usually lends itself to romantic comedy. I think we've all been there.

I was going to Studio 54 when I was 12 years old. It's true. It's crazy.

It's very difficult to put your finger on why a certain actor or actress will capture your attention, and you'll think they're right for a role. There's an essence to a person.

It's the demand of all demands to do a car chase that's unique because there are so many... really since the beginning of film, even in the silent era, 'The Keystone Cops.'

The system is not really particularly amenable to filmmakers who write and direct their own work. It's much more about the studio already having a property that has a marketable concept and then hiring the director on board.

'Apocalypse Now' poses questions without any attempt to provide definitive answers, and the film's profound ambiguities are integral to its enduring magic.

'Apocalypse Now' does not alienate us or deconstruct itself. In fact, it welcomes us in.

The sad truth for American actors is that they really have no control whatsoever over the material that they get, or can do, particularly actresses. And if you're over 40 and you're an actress, forget it.

I have three young children, and I kind of stopped going to movies in 2006. I go to see some, but I'm a little bit out of touch, and I didn't know who Marion Cotillard was.

The decision about digital or film is going to be made for us. I think the answer is that film is gonna be gone, although I think it'll make a comeback; it'll be like vinyl records or something.

I'm not a website guy, although I'm not a Luddite, either. I have looked at a computer, but I don't go to PopSugar and Goop and all that.

I think storytelling is a thing of beauty, and also very difficult. It's a craft you have to continue to work at.