I wouldn't say 'Frances Ha' is autobiographical, but it's definitely very personal.

I think sometimes bad behaviour can be liberating for certain people. They need to behave badly to find themselves - to go off path to find their path. You see it with kids all the time: They're testing boundaries, and I think that's healthy.

There is an isolated experience to being a director. It's very communal because there's a crew, but it's only you. You're the one on the hook.

I find a lot of writing happens when you're not actually at the computer. So I carry a notebook.

That's the nice thing about collaborating with someone: Your work becomes a conversation.

It's always really special to be at the New York Film Festival, and always a real privilege.

You can be aware that something is idiosyncratic, and give it to a character, but keep doing it.

My dad was a great movie companion. He wouldn't diminish 'The Jerk.' If I liked it, he liked it. He could see it through my eyes.

There was a telemarketing job one summer in high school that I was rejected for. I still walk by the building that I actually had the interview in. It's still in New York, and I always think about that job and why I didn't get it.

I'm interested in music as an extension of character.

Friends of friends had bands in college or in their early 20s and had a moment where they had some kind of interest from a record label or manager. It's always interesting how people handle those decisions and those moments.

Will Ferrell's made a lot of brilliant movies.

There's always some generational-guys-hanging-out movie that is made every few years, I think, and some of them are great.

I graduated in '91, so the '90s for me were very much the first years out of school, so I can't really look at that decade as independent of my own experience of my 20s, really.

I've had times in my life when I really haven't been able to figure myself out.

I've always liked working with friends or, you know, people I have outside relationships with.

I don't like when you necessarily know that this is the end of the movie. I like when a movie ends abruptly. You go through this, and some of the scenes are uncomfortable, and some are funny - and then suddenly it's over.

As a kid, I thought of myself as a funny person who secretly wanted to be serious, but now I think maybe I'm a serious person who secretly wants to be funny.

When I was a kid, I would fantasize about my own funeral.

How you start the movie is critical. And how often you feel that there's no reason for how it's starting.

Dance is a profession with an expiration date for many people.

When you find yourself on the Internet when you're supposed to be writing, you've already lost. It's even beyond procrastination when you end up on the Internet.

I like to try to shoot in the city in a way that allows the city to go about its business while we're shooting, and that's always a challenge because, unfortunately, people on the street don't know not to look in the camera or interact with the actors.

I've always felt some kind of connection to people who are kind of over-smart. People who over-think things to the point of some sort of paralysis, and I think that certainly can be me on any given day.