I'm the kid who wanted to grow up and be Bugs Bunny. I was very, very disappointed when I realized I couldn't grow up and be a cartoon character.

The people you live with at college, those first roommates often are people you're still friends with the rest of your life.

No one is asking what happened to all the homeless. No one cares, because it's easier to get on the subway and not be accosted.

My dad's chill. He's the guy who, you wreck the car, he says, 'Well, nobody was hurt. It's just some metal.'

As you get older, you want less from the world; you just want to experience it. Any barriers to feeling emotions get dismantled. And ordinary things become beautifully poetic.

Every day's a hustle.

Plots are artificial. Does your life have a plot? It has characters. There is a narrative. There's a lot of story, a lot of character. But plot? Eh, no.

Trump has a lot less than he says he does.

Ulrik Ottinger was the most real and experimental of all the German New Wave directors. She was probably the most out-there, too. She's a fascinating artist in that world.

No one believes this, but when I'm working, it's the same, whether I'm working on 'Bad News Bears,' 'Before Sunset,' 'A Scanner Darkly,' or 'Fast Food Nation.' I'm the same person, trying to make it work.

I really do remember everything. I see people I haven't seen in 20 years, and I can talk with them about what we talked about outside the high school.

I like films that just put you in someone's world. It can be very subversive. Hitchcock would put you in the mind of a psychopath, and you'd care about them.

I have an uncomfortable groove, 'cause I have a lot of different kinds of stories to tell.

I realized a long time ago that, even as a kid, it's all about the choices you make, the things you pursue. In the end, you're a sum of your choices.

I guess I was just always one of those guys who asked those fundamental questions: 'Who am I? What's this for? Why? What does this mean? Is this real?' All these pretty basic questions. I like making movies about people who are self-conscious in that way, and are trying to feel their way through the world.

As a little kid, you go where your parents drag you. You have no agency, no dominion.

I remember when I made 'A Scanner Darkly,' going, 'I hope people see it in theater - but I think it's going to be seen in someone's room at two in the morning.' It's that kind of movie. And I would have loved if it had been available on multiple formats at the moment it opened.

The pop culture tends to go to the lowest denominator, so cinema is in a weird place, due to its mass nature. It's diluted down to very little: simple stories and simple politics.

To jump from the indie ranks to play with the big dogs, there's a gate you have to pass through.

Whatever story you want to tell, tell it at the right size.

Something about Texas I'm not proud of is that our state murdered 37 people last year alone.

When I saw 'subUrbia' on stage, I started having those feelings inside me. I saw it as a film, and I felt I knew the characters, or I was the characters. It really dredged up all this stuff in me that never went away.

If you want to just make a good movie, if you don't enjoy every step and become a master of each little moment, then you shouldn't be doing it.

The arts were like, there's no opponent. It's just yourself. I'm not saying they don't make the arts a competition with awards and all that, but that's outside the work itself.

I always say I'll never make a film in Austin in summer, but I always end up here.

I think people forget how radical the narrative of 'Slacker' is. There's no story, you know? We could go from one character to the next to the next and never return.

Well, you have to keep your faith in the fact that there are a lot of intelligent people who are actively looking for something interesting, people who have been disappointed so many times.

I think they should make it a felony to criticise a film product. Particularly my film product. It's anti-American.

Some films really do take years to get going, but I'd say that most of the films I want to do are slightly smaller projects. Some could be sketches. They're not all oil paintings.

The truth will only be told over a career.

It was always kind of sad when your favorite punk rockers, like Jello Biafra or someone, would say they hate something you like. It was, 'Oh, I thought we were on the same page.'

I played baseball in high school, and in some parallel universe, if I had not gone into filmmaking, I may have been the coach cursing at the kids.

A college athlete is going to be competitive. You don't get to that level if you're not.

I grew up in Huntsville, which is a main prison town. It's crazy. The conditions are so bad in prison, often, for the inmates.

I look up and go, 'I'm living in the world I visualized a long time ago.' From making movies, to the Film Society, to just being in a film world. It's a life that I wanted to inhabit. I think everyone has the opportunity to do that in this world - it's just, are you gonna work for it, and how much does it mean to you?

Filmmakers are going to make films, just like painters are going to paint.

Artists are great. They jump in.

I was dating girls who were actresses, and that was fun, so I took a playwriting class. But that was short-lived. That was one year. Around that time, I was seeing movies that were making me think in terms of images.

You're always just trying to make your film, tell the story you're trying to tell - best you can, you know.

I don't want to be nostalgic for some kind of laid-back Austin where nothing was happening.

I grew up in a little town in east Texas where it was really not on the table to question certain things like whether you should eat meat or not.

I let the American people down.

The more you stay in this kind of job, the more you realize that a public figure, a major public figure, is a lonely man.

Government can provide opportunity. But opportunity means nothing unless people are prepared to seize it.

I believe in the battle-whether it's the battle of a campaign or the battle of this office, which is a continuing battle.

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.

Tell them to send everything that can fly.

Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.

I wish I could give you a lot of advice, based on my experience of winning political debates. But I don't have that experience. My only experience is at losing them.

The time has come for us to draw the line. The time has come for the responsible leaders of both political parties to take a stand against overgrown Government and for the American taxpayer.