“Making movies was more a reaction to not being chosen for sports. Other kids were out there playing at whatever; I was off making something blow up and filming it, or making a mould of my sister's ...”

“What I'm still grappling with and learning how to do is to be looking and thinking cinematically, having come from television.”

“What's a bigger mystery box than a movie theater? You go to the theater, you're just so excited to see anything - the moment the lights go down is often the best part.”

“We live in an age of instant knowledge. And there's almost a sense of entitlement to that.”

“I try to push ideas away, and the ones that will not leave me alone are the ones that ultimately end up happening.”

“I mean, my dad's a television producer, and I knew I could get a job as an assistant or a reader with one of his friends, but it wasn't exactly what I wanted to do.”

“There is no second place for doing first rate work.”

“You can have everything you want if you can put your heart and soul into everything you do.”

“For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.”

“Tell the story that's been growing in your heart, the characters you can't keep out of your head, the tale story that speaks to you, that pops into your head during your daily commute, that wakes y...”

“I write for the kid in me. . . . Often when Im working on a story, Ill find myself laughing at something my characters have done, or even being surprised at where theyve taken the story. Its as if ...”

“If there is a magic in story writing, and I am convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.”