American Quotes

About 40 years ago I had an experience where I wrote a tract.

But the Jews will also be believers, so you can say that all the saints, both gentiles and Jews, will go into the millennial kingdom and populate the earth.

After I'd preached a message on Sunday night, I'd print it up.

There is no Democratic or Republican way of cleaning the streets.

It makes no difference if I burn my bridges behind me - I never retreat.

Women have to take more control of their careers. They can't just wait to be cast in a film.

When I was young, I had two older sisters, and since I was the youngest in my family, my mom took me around with her all the time. I was forever with her when she was having coffee in the middle of the afternoon with her three sisters. And they would talk about men. I absorbed a lot of that.

If I can make a living as a writer, I can do anything.

I've always shot on film, but the times are changing.

I tend to believe, when you're in a relationship, if you don't fight, it's not a real relationship. You have to have arguments and tensions, otherwise I don't believe it.

I just really have an affinity for women. Watching them go through journeys is more interesting to me than watching men.

The past, though it cannot be relived, can always be repaired.

If we put the camera on ourselves, our friends and neighbors, we'll come up with some scary stuff.

I would be more frightened as a writer if people thought my movies were like science fiction.

I was always looking for the most dramatic emphasis.

I wanted to tell a story that interested me as much in the telling as in the watching.

I wanted to make these people real, not like they were in a painting. Like these are people who don't know they're in a period movie. Those concerns are incredibly immediate.

I think the more the actor lets you know what he thinks of the character, the less the audience cares - like a comedian who laughs at his own jokes.

I think Christine and Chad are on the opposite extremes of the spectrum. Christine is a model victim, and Chad is a model perpetrator, and Howard is closer to the middle.

I see bits and pieces of me in all the characters in my films.

I make movies I want to see.

I have a healthy view of what one can do with art.

I didn't choose BYU, I like to think it chose me.

First I would probably place men at the bottom of the food chain. On a grander scale, I would say they're reacting to change. Feminism has got to be part of that.

Everyone has a story.

Everyone has a little bit of Howard and Chad in them. I think there's Christine in all men as well.

But for me, it feels like a natural extension of what I've been doing: exploring relationships. Here you have two relationships and we can explore how difficult it is for people to be together.

But even with a character like Cary who is relatively outlandish, at the end of the movie he's in a place where I wouldn't have expected him to be - taking on the responsibility of a woman who is pregnant and who used to be his best friend's wife.

And with Aaron, I'd have to find a reason not to work with him.

And I've got some screenplays and plays ready to dip into when I need to.