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

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.

Without In The Company of Men, I could still be teaching, so who knows if this would've existed.

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

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

There is a lot of absurdity sometimes, not just in Mormonism but often in other religions that want to pretend that no bad happens in their church, rather than taking care of what bad does happen.

People think my work is therapeutic. I don't see it that way. It's not like I'm saving money from a weekly therapy visit by writing down my life.

My best male friend is my best friend until he crosses me. We're all protective of the self.

We live in a disposable society. It's easier to throw things out than to fix them. We even give it a name - we call it recycling.

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 was very careful to cast guys who were very good-looking and very fit and who had a certain sense of privilege about them, because with that sense of privilege comes contempt.

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.

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

People have perhaps gotten to the point where for the most part movies are a just bit of escape.

I will say that the idea of a woman being deceptive came from that original discussion with critics and reporters about if woman could do that kind of thing. Evelyn, herself, grew out of the discussions about how capable women are of deceit and lying and manipulation.

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

My business is can I create a world that's possible and could happen? I think that's the only thing that I have to do, and I think that I have done that each time.

With In the Company of Men, the misogynist label stuck early and firmly. In the end, it probably did hurt the film a bit, because getting women into the theaters was difficult.

We humans are a fairly barbarous bunch.

I'm more than open to hope, but I think men and women have a difficult time dealing with each other and often take the low road.

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

Everyone has a story.

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

Unrequited love is always a great thing.

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

In a relationship you have to open yourself up.

I make movies I want to see.

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

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

Relationships in general make people a bit nervous. It's about trust. Do I trust you enough to go there?

Just in the past few years - since I've been making movies, which isn't a very long time - you now have a culture that is fascinated and informed about the box office in a way that sometimes filmmakers weren't even.

Everybody has the ability to be manipulative, to be hateful and deceitful.

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.

You start as an audience member and create a world you're interested in, and then you move into the telling of those stories, bringing what has interested you as an audience member.

I was always looking for the most dramatic emphasis.

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.

My best male friend is my best friend until he crosses me. Were all protective of the self.

I have three daughters, so I can't be as tough as I want to be. When you have kids - especially daughters - they know how to work you. They're a lot smarter than we are, that's for sure. But I'll be more tough on their boyfriends.

It's absurd to think of 'Pride and Prejudice,' this classic, beloved book, beset with a zombie uprising. The goal is to make you suspend your disbelief enough to allow you to get lost in the story and believe what you're reading for a while.

If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.

I'm always going back to New York for Broadway workshops or reading. So I always keep my foot in the door: I'm always on the lookout for the next Broadway show.

'Don't Look Back' is my first YA contemporary mystery/thriller. It's been described as 'Black Swan' meets 'Pretty Little Liars'.

The lunar flights give you a correct perception of our existence. You look back at Earth from the moon, and you can put your thumb up to the window and hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything you've ever known is behind your thumb, and that blue-and-white ball is orbiting a rather normal star, tucked away on the outer edge of a galaxy.

You need the audience to go on the ride with you. You can't just isolate them.

They didn't even like Margaret Thatcher but at least there was Margaret Thatcher. There have been women, you know, Sonia Gandhi for heaven's sakes in India.

Our Soviet espionage efforts had virtually never, or had very seldom, produced any worthwhile political or economic intelligence on the Soviet Union.

When I shop, the world gets better, and the world is better, but then it's not, and I need to do it again.

It takes a long time to get a reputation for quality. There are people in our industry, they're basically copiers. Look at the cars on the streets. They all look alike. But if you put quality into a product, then have it validated, you have huge credibility.