[On making 'Blue Valentine'] “There was one day where we were shooting on the bus. That's a bit of a movie trope - the encounter on a bus - and yet when we shot that scene, we had a rainbow come out of nowhere. When stuff like that happens, and I know it sounds kind of corny, but you really feel that you are doing the right thing at the right time.”
“It was a huge risk. I quit my job that paid fine. I could have had a family and probably survived as a software engineer pretty well. But I quit all that to do this.”
“The most important thing for me in movie making is to love the characters of the movie, so even though you only have a few seconds with a character, that person has to have his own life. Therefore, I want to respect it, I want to make movies where each character has his own individuality.”
“The soundscape is fifty percent of the experience. Any kid can nowadays easily point out where and how you’ve made certain visual effects, but very rarely what they’ve experienced with their ears. This is still an enormous orchestra to conduct, which is in the dark for the audience.”