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" So much of artistic creation is just exclusion. It's not creating things; it's just excluding things that really aren't going to be helpful. "

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" I think one thing that makes me delay projects more than other people is, I see this silver lining in a turn-down. Maybe if I just wrote a script and then pounded my head against all the doors, I would be shooting more films. "

" I remember when I was trying to do 'Metropolitan,' in breaks I would read a page of two of Jane Austen as a palate-cleanser. "

" I'm very troubled when editors oblige their film critics to read the novel before they see the film. Reading the book right before you see the film will almost certainly ruin the film for you. "

" I'm a late bloomer. Even in high school, everyone else was charging ahead, and I didn't come into my own until very late. I feel that's true in cinema, too. I didn't even start 'Metropolitan' until I was 37. "

" One of the downsides of money is if there's no money, there are very few real jerks who are attached to your project. And if there is money, you do attract some very difficult, unhelpful people. "

" I don't think there's anything cliche feminine about Jane Austen. And, anyway, her earliest champions were Sir Walter Scott and the Prince Regent. "

" At the New York Harvard Club, they've moved the memorial for those who died in World Wars I and II up to an obscure little hallway; they used to be in the main hall, in the most prominent location. The sacrifice of those young people I always found so stunning and so admirable. "

" I'm not sure what my material would have been if I'd have started earlier. I probably would have started with 'Damsels in Distress' kinds of films because that's the kind of comedy I was writing in college. So I didn't really have any life experience to work off of. "

" The thing that was most harmful was that there was always something that was about to happen. So I found myself indulging in the writer's luxury of doing another draft, another idea. If this project isn't happening, then I'll shelve one script and start writing another. And in that way, the years go by, and there's very little money coming in. "

" A lot of people in the film industry are fatalists who think a worthwhile film will always achieve its destiny, and the films that aren't worthwhile won't. It's all sort of pre-determined, etc. And I don't think that's true at all. "

" You have to constantly work on your script if it needs it. You don't accept, 'Oh, I did a draft and...' No, it's your responsibility to work on the script as much as possible and make it better and better. "

" I was in Paris for nine years, starting in '98. One of the great things when I was first there were these wonderful CD collections, selling for almost nothing. For ten euros, you'd get three CDs of all the Gershwin songs. "

" I'm the ayatollah of the Jane Austen fan base! I want to lead the fan base, not be attacked and devoured by the fan base. "

" There's so much of this thing now, where you're supposed to do all the work before you get the commission. I think it's really good to try to resist that. If you just have a week to come up with a pitch for something, your ideas aren't going to be very good. Get your income from somewhere else, and keep your writing not tied into these contracts. "

" Producers have a tendency to put you in a pigeonhole: 'What does this white, middle-aged preppy know about 1960s Kingston?' "

" I think my favorite two words are 'true blue.' I think those words are really important, and the spirit of them has been lost. "

" My whole career, only one person has stepped up to back me. All these people say they like your films. They say this and they say that, but no one actually does anything. "

" Happy is the small business that can hire additional employees besides the proprietor; rare is the indie-film enterprise that can be happy in this way. The norm is an unpaid principal with no employees between productions. "

" Coming out of university, one of my obsessions was that in the novels I was reading, they seemed to be portraying a world that had a social fabric. People knew each other in 'War and Peace.' They went to all the same balls. These were societies with tightly wound, woven, social textures. "

" There's the right person, or right people, for each other. There is that order that's searching to be found but, I think, it's not as if everything is going to be automatic. So, people could really be meant for each other and its goes awry; or they could have to learn or develop and grow up together. Grow to be right together. "

" In Mexico, wealth and poverty live next to each other and are cordial with each other - in my experience. "

" I'm very concerned about the countries bordering Russia. But let's stay off that stuff. "

" It's a challenge for any writer to write beyond what he knows. You get material, adapt it, and do the best you can with it. "

" A brief experience with a Radcliffe girl got very bad very quickly. I was so destroyed by it that I left and went to Mexico for a semester, where I have cousins. I learned how to speak Spanish, which was really important for my life. It was wonderful going to Mexico, learning another culture and a language. "

" I didn't realize how limiting an R rating is. I made 'Disco' as a cautionary tale for 14- and 15-year-old girls, and those girls were not allowed to see the film by their parents. "

" Sometimes, people who are very fastidious about what they're going to do in their work are not very fastidious in their private life. I'm like that. I love it when people do really nice things around me, but I don't have time to do it for myself. It's very hard for me to even buy a new pair of trousers. "

" Paris is the destination for brokenhearted American women. I think men go there and have their hearts broken, but women come there with their hearts broken. "

" I'm anti-verite. I think the verite style is a completely false thing. Most things are false to arrive at a truth; verite is falsity without acknowledging its falsity. "

" I feel that if you want to make films, you have to be willing to make it without a fee. You get a deferment, I guess. "

" I've gotten to really, really like being back in the States. It's so easy being in your own country, and I really like Americans - typical American towns and provincial college towns are my ideal place to be. "