I'm totally devoted to '30s cinema.

I'm for people clinging. I'm pro-clinging.

The Cha-Cha is no more ridiculous than life itself.

I can talk about Jane Austen until the cows come home.

I originally wanted to be F. Scott Fitzgerald, but failed.

My guilty pleasure is watching the Investigation Discovery channel.

I identify entirely with Jane Austen's point of view, on everything.

The only way to end up in the perfect future is to invent it yourself.

Our roots are clinging, we shouldn't knock down so many old 'buildings.'

I like things that are sort of comic and humorous rather than satirical.

I'm very concerned about the countries bordering Russia. But let's stay off that stuff.

I find it preferable not to have public opinions about anything. It's good for me to shut up.

There are bad preppies and bad priests and bad humanitarians. Any group can have its bad apple.

When you're doing the work, film and TV are exactly the same. TV is just film in reduced pieces.

Categorizing people economically and hating them because you think they're this way is a prejudice.

I call the '70s the "golden age of television"; in the early '70s there were sensationally good shows.

In Mexico, wealth and poverty live next to each other and are cordial with each other - in my experience.

I think it's helpful to aspire to make films if you feel that other people are not doing what you want to do.

I kind of put people from the past up on a pedestal; I don't think, in a lot of ways, that we're at their level.

Really, having a show freely available online is like having your book in the library. It's wonderful; it's ideal.

For me, the present is a golden era. That's the greatest golden era. Right now. I just like pining for lost times.

There's certain key dance crazes that are just so much fun - wouldn't that be a great thing to do, to invent a dance?

I feel that if you want to make films, you have to be willing to make it without a fee. You get a deferment, I guess.

Paris is a Roach Motel for top American journalists: They check in, having won the plum foreign posting, but never leave.

I'm the ayatollah of the Jane Austen fan base! I want to lead the fan base, not be attacked and devoured by the fan base.

Find someone hypersocial and crazy and try not to follow them to their doom, but to make friends with their nicer friends.

It's a challenge for any writer to write beyond what he knows. You get material, adapt it, and do the best you can with it.

Producers have a tendency to put you in a pigeonhole: 'What does this white, middle-aged preppy know about 1960s Kingston?'

I remember when I was trying to do 'Metropolitan,' in breaks I would read a page of two of Jane Austen as a palate-cleanser.

Coming out of college, back to New York, where I didn't really know that many people, I thought our world was very atomized.

I think my favorite two words are 'true blue.' I think those words are really important, and the spirit of them has been lost.

I decided the moment I graduated from college that I would never wear blue jeans again. And I have never worn blue jeans again.

The dull externals of the screenwriter's working life are well known: We are the people taking up too much table space at cafes.

We learned some bad things, and the Vietnam War led to some bad conclusions. We're not the greatest generation, that's for sure.

I thought I was going to make bigger films for mass audiences. And I wanted that. I actually had in mind a James-Bondian thriller.

It's really important to have subjects that people all over the world are familiar with, and the Disney films are really great that way.

You can be an American or an Englishman or Canadian and be a Parisian. It's a very admirable culture, and people want to identify with it.

I think Austin is read more now than Charles Dickens, and Dickens was much more popular in his day. She endures because of her classicism.

I love watching the romantic comedies of the late '50s and early '60s. I used to have a rule that if Tony Randall's in it, it can't be bad.

So much of artistic creation is just exclusion. It's not creating things; it's just excluding things that really aren't going to be helpful.

I find it really disturbing to be watching a lot of the medium that I'm trying to work in. I prefer to be doing things that are farther away.

There's some people who are just very dynamic about social life, and it can be some pretty crazy stuff, but you end up meeting people you like.

I have to embrace the fact people find me divisive, but I find it remarkable. I was very disturbed by the hatred 'Damsels in Distress' received.

It becomes a lot better for the actors when we're 'shooting, shooting, shooting,' instead of waiting around in a trailer for something to happen.

I don't think there's anything cliche feminine about Jane Austen. And, anyway, her earliest champions were Sir Walter Scott and the Prince Regent.

I really like the short stories that Melissa Bank writes. I think she's sort of channeling the female version of J.D. Salinger in more recent days.

With all my films, the pace is not very fast, and so people get bored with them and comment that they're just people talking in rooms and all that.

It's terrible to write what are essentially comedies for people with no sense of humor. Everyone thinks they have a sense of humor, but observably not.

I've had no money, absolutely, from my family. They paid for a good education - or schools that purported to be a good education - but, um, not a dime.

What frustrates me a lot about some aspects of filmmaking is people thinking everyone is really dumb and that we have to make everything really obvious.

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