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" My favorite films are the ones that I walk away from and I know I saw a story. "

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" I don't read books on how to write screenplays just because I'm stubborn. So it's all sort of made up. "

" I can honestly say, there was a moment when I was writing 'Upstream Color' where I fell so hard for what it was becoming that I couldn't think of anything else. I was absolutely secure in this story in the way I'm rarely secure about anything else in my life. "

" I am obsessed with story. I had a late awakening in life. In college was the first time that I understood what you could do with a story and what a good novel is - literary value and subtext and irony and everything. "

" Any film that exists that is thorough, you can't give it to an audience of one and have that be effective communication. Communication involves an audience of many that have a conversation, put it through the ringer, filter it and then a sense of it coalesces. "

" Film is a collaborative process, absolutely, but I am a control freak. "

" I love to work. It's the idea of having someone else tell you how to make your film or how to sell it - that's the part I can't really deal with. I would rather do 1,000 things that are work than deal with one thing that's a political problem. "

" I think I'll always want to write and direct. I'm interested in producing and helping other people tell stories. But I'm still in love with writing and directing. "

" I believe that filmmakers have to internalize the story and subtext so well that all of the departments can start to speak to each other - that music can speak to cinematography can speak to writing and back again. "

" I will be making films, and I'm going to keep working, no matter what I have to do. And I don't plan to ever ask for permission from anybody. "

" I stole a ton of film language from Steven Soderbergh and 'The Limey.' It's the definition of elliptical. It was the first movie I remember that introduced me to storytelling that isn't just one scene after another, and that things can be mixed up in the way that real experiences can. "

" I love the concept of the romance that exists when people are broken. Like, the promise of a romance when you're at the bottom. I think that's infinitely compelling and romantic. "

" 'Upstream Color' in particular, it's got to infect culture at some level in order to have a life of its own. Then it'll be judged, and it'll either live or it won't by its own merit, and history will decide whether it's relevant however long into the future. I think that's more than enough to hope for. "

" It's interesting because I don't ever want to ask a better question than I can answer, if that makes sense. I find that frustrating as a viewer. Compelling questions, while not easy, are easier than compelling answers. "

" Many of my favorite films, if someone were to tell me simply what they're about, I probably wouldn't be that interested. Plot often has so little to do with what's at the heart of a film. "

" I'm interested in making something that moves quickly, that hopefully is compelling minute-by-minute but really packed densely with exploration. I'm very interested in how re-visitable we can make films. If we can get them closer to a music album, then it's not such an arduous process to revisit, and exploration can be a bit more cryptic. "

" I don't believe that narrative works when it's trying to teach a lesson or speak a factual truth. "

" I feel like we want to compartmentalise things and say, 'Well, that's emotional, artistic and subjective, while this is intellectual, objective and measured.' I have difficulty thinking that's the way we experience things. "

" Filmmaking is a thousand choices a day, and it's important to just let those choices potentially be informed by something deeper. "

" I feel like math and writing are the same thing. You're putting together a lot of complex things to satisfy different requirements. It's got to be aesthetically pleasing; it's got to have subtext; it's got to convey information. "

" My job as an author - at least the way I think of it - is to make a story that is coded and puzzling enough to entice conversation and interpretation, but also to do the opposite: to make some things clear so that it is meaningful in some way, not just a random assemblage of ideas. "

" All I know is that as an audience member, I am less and less inclined to go to the theater. "

" I've always been anxious about 'Primer.' There's good things about it, but all I've seen for a long time is the flaws. "

" It's a risk, but I'm sort of ready to let go of thinking of movies as books that you can watch. The notion of, 'If I put the narrative blocks in the right order, this will solve all of my storytelling problems.' No, it won't, and you end up with little more than books on film. "

" I hate even the idea of a synopsis. When stories are really working, when you're providing subtextual exploration and things that are deeply layered, you're obligated to not say things out loud. "

" I got a degree in math, from not a good school in Texas, and then I went to work as a software engineer. Just not glamorous at all. "

" The only thing I can ever do is make a film that I can respond to. I could not make a romantic comedy for college girls. I wouldn't know how that works. "

" I've heard stories about movies that are really maybe difficult and really dramatic and good, but they are being sold as romantic comedies. All it's going to do is just... that's hurting the work, because that just makes it impossible for anyone to see it correctly. "

" I'm constantly surprised by... an orange will roll off a table, and I'll catch it before I knew it was falling. Something happens there. We could write it off and say, 'Subconsciously I knew that was happening,' but there's so many things every day - I'm amazed by how little we know. "

" I have a really, really hard time sitting down and watching a TV show, except I'm apparently willing to watch the same episode of 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,' like, seven times. "

" There is commerciality in storytelling, even in a film or a piece of literature. These things exist. That's why stories came to be: to hold attention and, while you're not looking, you'll get hopefully some nutritional value that the author has been working up. That's narrative; that's passing stuff down. "