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.

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.

Johnny Winter is one of the best blues players in the world. He's very underrated.

The world is... the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions. Truth does not inhabit only the inner man, or more accurately, there is no inner man, man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself.

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.

Well concerning the world records that I did, I think it helps a lot to me, yeah. I think it's a very individual thing because I heard some people say, like, oh I don't like it at all. But I definitely, for me it really made a big difference.

Christians should never fail to sense the operation of an angelic glory. It forever eclipses the world of demonic powers, as the sun does a candle's light.

I do believe there are leaders who are like lightning and they come along and they lead. The Lincolns of the world, the Alexander the Greats, they do exist. They have existed.

The people of England are the most enthusiastic in the world.

You've got to realize. In the western world, regardless of what color you are, what title the music is, it's all played by the same notes.

Most fathers don't see the war within the daughter, her struggles with conflicting images of the idealized and flawed father, her temptation both to retreat to Daddy's lap and protection and to push out of his embrace to that of beau and the world beyond home.

Scientific corporations might well become almost independent states and be enabled to undertake their largest experiments without consulting the outside world - a world which would be less and less able to judge what the experiments were about.

To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower Hold infinity in the palms of your hand and eternity in an hour.