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

The opera in Los Angeles is excellent.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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 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.

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

I feel like it's a real shame that my generation doesn't make an appearance at the opera.

The word 'operatic' is often misused to mean over the top, where someone is over-emoting. And that does a terrible disservice because 'operatic' to me means a commitment and a belief to the emotion of the moment that is sincere.

I think true economic class unhappiness comes from when across the street someone has a new Cadillac and you can't get that.

I start with a mood or an idea that comes from a personal place emotionally, and the narrative concepts come much later.

The actor always must be in the scene, not above the scene. To communicate any larger ideas is my problem; it's how the narrative is constructed and directed that hopefully does it.

What I do have to get across is the truth of the moment within the given scene. It's my job, as a director and screenwriter, to create the environment in which all those moments will come together eventually.

Most people don't watch a movie four or five times; they watch it once.

It's hard to run away from who you are, and when your taste is formed is a very important thing.

The conventional wisdom is that people come to the United States, and immigration is so great, and they say, 'America, what a great country.' And a lot of that is true.

The closer you can get to being personal, the better the work is, or the more interesting the work is.

I suppose I'm always trying to break down the wall between my characters and myself. I'm trying to make the film as expressive and personal as I can, even if I can't explain, for example, how important it is for me to be Jewish.