Let the story lead you. If the story needs to be dark, let it go dark. If it's a sweet, good-for-the-world story, that's what it is.

There are so many films I lean on and look toward and return to that give me some guidance on how to keep moving in the world, and that's what film does, at its best.

I wanted to direct long before I'd even written a screenplay.

And for better or worse, a story like 'Pieces of April' is the kind of story I'm supposed to tell. The kind of story that makes you laugh as much as possible but also breaks your heart.

When I was a young lad just out of college at the North Carolina School of the Arts, I directed several plays that I wrote. It was essential theater, meaning we had no money, so our set may be six stools and two chairs and eight cream pies.

My mother's sobriety - that's when I found the theater, that's when I moved from being a basketball player to being a musician, to being an actor, to then being a writer.

A novel is challenging, because you have more story than you need and you have to select and narrow.

I completely hold on to the idea that people are eager if not desperate to be told a good story.

When you have an intimate encounter with mortality as my family and I did with my mom's death, I took a long look at my life and I asked myself what was the one thing that I hadn't done that I had really wanted to do. And it was to write and direct a film.

I've always had an acute sense of mortality, maybe because my father's a minister.

One of the great kicks of having a movie made is that you envision this world.

There are sections of the film that I don't love. There are moments that really lift and elevate, and then there are parts that feel clunkier to me. But the totality of 'Harold and Maude' is so much greater than maybe other films that are more perfect or look more beautiful or handle every moment more exquisitely.

I don't know if a mother's love and a father's love is that different.

In my family, if something were to have happened with one of my kids, I think my wife would be the tougher one.

I'm looking, often, towards younger people, listening to how they're working, at least they're trying, and some of the old greats, too. Just to try to remain relevant and off-balance, but hungry and eager.

If you get back into the beginner mindset, you can unearth an energy and a fire that I didn't know I could even still possess.

I'm the lucky father to two young men. When any of your kids, and your parents feel this way about you, clearly, when your kids find what they love to do and they throw themselves into it, and they find joy in the doing of it, and it's actually work that's honorable, and, you know, all of those things, it's a great feeling.

My older son works in finance and private equity, which he loves, and Lucas works in film and theater.

I grew up in a very loving but very broken family, and I suppose that's why I'm drawn to telling stories about well-intentioned people who are doing their best - but are not always successful - in figuring out how to maneuver through this complicated, bumpy and broken world.

So much of writing is about what characters don't say, and in the early drafts, sometimes things get overwritten.

If you wanted John Gielgud to cry, he could say, 'Which eye?'

Lucas is living the life that I wanted, but I want to be clear, I don't feel there's been any pressure for him to live it.

Well, it made perfect sense that I originally wanted to be an actor because every Sunday, we walked into church and we acted like we were the happiest, most together family.

My mother, Carole Hedges, was my world until she walked out of our house when I was 7. Actually, she didn't walk out. Alcohol walked her out.

There was a part of me that wanted to take my place next to, you know, Debra Granik. She's such a hero for me.

There's no reason that a writer, if they have some discipline and curiosities and passion, can't be vital for a long, long time.

Ultimately what I try to do is work on stories I love with people I admire, and sometimes they get made and sometimes they don't.

Writing a really good screenplay is not easy. It can be a very punishing form.

I make sure when I direct that it's a very joy-based set that hopefully is filled with a lot of respect.

I want to make a series of films of contemporary America that feel urgent and deal with sometimes-topical matters, but hopefully in a universal way.

The kinds of movies I make are not easy to get made.