Remember: a story is not a vignette. It has a beginning, middle and an end. It is not merely a snapshot in time.
An actor is an instrument. One needs to control them.
The landscape is a reflection of the inner life. Since I can't shoot the inner life, all I can shoot is the exterior but I know that when I'm filming outside, I'm filming inside. I can only really touch the inside through the mise-en-scene. So through the mise-en-scene of the outside we can explore the inside
Cinema is all about going back from shadow to light and back and forth: cinema is a place of transgression.
The United States is such a potent political, cultural, and economic model in the evocation of the contemporary world, that to come here, select some elements from the prototype and rearrange them, that's really interesting artistically.
The more elaborate your narrative, the more the spectator shuts up and listens obediently. And if the filmmaker keeps quiet, the spectator will himself project his own assumptions and sentiments onto the screen.
There is no god. I am an atheist. It is up to us to become God. We need to be elevated, to become saints. God alienates people from themselves.
The more intelligent and competent a woman is in her adult life, the less likely she is to have received an adequate amount of romantic attention in adolescence.
Before and after. . . I heard a thousand times that a boy, or a man, can't make you happy, that you have to be happy on your own before you can be happy with another person. All I can say is, I wish it were true.
And I've been hurt hurt bad. I might be just twenty-six, but I'm an old woman in disguise twenty-six goin'on sixty-five.
The grace of God reaches to the furthest extent to those who are prepared to acknowledge their need.