- People often mistake my surprise for disgust.
- Talent is useless without a plan and a means to communicate it.
- It's amazing what good things can happen to you if you only keep your mouth shut.
- I'm not interested in drama that is created by the juxtaposition of distinct stories, rather, I like the progress of a single narrative arc. I'm old fashioned, I guess.
- Our response to films are influenced by the times we live in. We don't know what we're ready for until we come face to face with it.
- I only reveal my true self in the darkness of a movie theater. That's where I'm most comfortable, where I'm more receptive to ideas, where I'm an easy victim, emotionally. It's also the place where I have cried the most and feel most safe. The darkness functions as my safe-house, confession and classroom.
- I have had the great fortune to have been in the right rooms, to meet the right people, to hear the right conversations. I'm aware of this. But I'm also aware that the same intuition that has propelled me forward has also gotten me into a lot of trouble.
- I feel most centered in New York City, and know that love and career will ultimately coalesce there. No matter what the situation, the city's vibrancy and authenticity allow me to take on any challenge. I find it unfortunate that Los Angeles is the necessary pit stop for me to conduct business.
- People often cite luck as an explanation for a person's success. I personally don't believe in luck, but I believe in need. I've always been in need to express myself, in one form or another. This allows me to fit in quite nicely within Hollywood's fear-based culture. I know I'm not lucky. I am desperate. Desperate for opportunely, desperate for art, desperate for personal and professional fulfillment.
- It's not like I grew up in homes that advocated taking huge risks, I just understood early on, that's what I had to do to get where I wanted.
- I read a story not too long ago that said Steven Spielberg lived in a "world of his own creation." And I thought to myself, "Yes, please. That's sounds fine. I'll take that."
- I found my way by being surrounded by the lost.
- I've learned that what you are thinking about, you are becoming.
- I have this weird desire to put myself through as many different emotional situations as possible, because once I live it, I can write it.
- The more I see of the world, the more I learn about myself and this is essential for my life as a dramatist. I need to understand people, sound, sight, color, reason, being, life, foreign and domestic, everywhere I may go.
- On creating his pseudonym, "Odeus Tular", at the age of 15: "At the time I was deeply into Greek mythology. So I determined, since I was going to create myths for a living, my name should be apart of that."
- I truly believe that if I do not connect with the world on a global scale, I will not survive.
- I feel incredibly comfortable in crowded rooms. The more faces, the more conversations, and the more material there is for me to inquire, probe and imagine.
- I can't help that I'm fascinated by art/artists, my need for stimulation is constant, and the more something/someone offers me questions, the more attracted I am to it/them.
- On writing his first screenplay, "The Little Things": The first twenty years of my life I was observing and retaining as much information as possible. As I reared my 21st birthday, everything just became clear to me. "Listen to the world." So I listened.
- I will always have secrets. And I believe no one in my life will ever have "all" of me. My work is too demanding for that request.
- On the existing pressures of making your first film: I'm awfully glad I discovered I couldn't do everything myself. And this wasn't a blow to my ego, it turned out to be a blessing. With sharing the film-making responsibilities, I learned to depend on others and realized only a fool would ever say one man makes a film. The art is a collaborative one, and I was extremely fortunate to be surrounded by true artists who would help me steer the ship when I lost control. It was humility that allowed me to be open to the brilliance of others.
- I read everything, look at everything. If I permanently fill myself with independent culture and establishment culture, I basically know as much as I can, so in turn, my brain functions as a sampling machine.
- Most creative types fear the blank page, I, on the other hand, fear the full page, the page that has the ability to be read and absorbed by someone else.
- At school, I felt like an astronaut in King Arthur's court, I was too exotic for where I was. I didn't hate the company of other children but I wanted to be a grown up so bad. I wanted to be taken seriously, have an impact and childhood didn't fulfill my desires for the connections I was looking for.
- I have one instinct stronger than any other thing in life, and that is the instinct for survival.
- I have been enamored with the process of film-making all my life. I have very early memories of being in elementary school and having apart of our campus being shut down because a film was being shot. The whole place was buzzing with activity, and time stopped (which was great because I was always bored in class). And I remember feeling, "That seems a lot more fun than what I'm doing." I remember looking at the trailers and the crew on their trucks and thinking, "This is just a huge circus!" Much later when I was working on massive film sets, I felt so relieved, everything had come full circle and that childhood fascination was still there for me. I feel at home on film sets and know deep down it is where I belong...with the other circus people.
- It took me quite awhile to realize that none of impulses were vain. My life has been affected by great film-makers. They enlarged my consciousness, and enlarged MY sense of things. I'd be a smaller person if I hadn't experienced Coppola and Spielberg or Altman, Lee, Kazan, Nichols, and so forth. They enriched my existence, and so I want to enrich other people's existence.
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