I can remember my father gave me a huge history of football for my 12th birthday - I used to read that a lot. I can remember thinking it was cool that something I was interested in even had a history. Most things I loved didn't.

I always thought 'Of Mice and Men' was such a perfect book because there's nothing not to understand, but it's still really clever and moving and complicated, but everybody understands the complication.

I'm quite gloomy. I just am one of those people, vaguely lugubrious.

Studying English was useless, completely useless. It took me years to recover from that. Every time I tried to write, it sounded like a bad university essay.

The natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.

You can't really ask for anything more than to be working for your entire life - and to be doing something that some people respond to.

Paris is different from LA in regards to its historical architecture. I think that's what gives Paris it's charm and beauty.

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.

When I make art, I think about its ability to connect with others, to bring them into the process.

I think art is the imperfectly perfect or perfectly imperfect way of self-expression.

I think all art - even one as lowly as making jokes about celebrities - is there to make a connection.

I think in art, but especially in films, people are trying to confirm their own existences.