I would say that when I came into this chapter of my filmmaking career, starting with 'The Fighter,' there was this sense that you have to go from your instincts and you have to go from your gut, and you have to not hesitate and you have to not hedge.

I'm always looking for a way to surprise audiences. That's, I feel, my job as a director. I felt that Amy Adams playing a tough woman in 'The Fighter' was a surprise. People saw her as a princess.

I was frustrated because I couldn't get going, as I was trying to figure out how to make films. I had various jobs, I taught a SAT class, I was a bartender, I had a day job at an office and was making short films.

When I write an email where I outlined a whole scene, it just came out of my unconscious, it comes from a deeper place. The same thing happens when the actors go, take after take, and just get lost in it. When you're in a house, you don't think about being in the house; you're just there.

He that raises a large family does, indeed, while he lives to observe them, stand a broader mark for sorrow; but then he stands a broader mark for pleasure too.

I've wanted to be a writer since I was seven, but I didn't grow up in family where people aspired to live as writers.

I grew up in suburban New York, and my family wasn't much on traveling, so when I arrived at my alma mater, The Colorado College, I'd never been out West before, seen a 14,000-foot mountain, experienced snow in 70-degree weather, or come into contact with something called a 'dude.'

We have lived together for more than 18 years. Malaika is like family to us even after separation. We have a son together. We are responsible for him.