KENNETH LONERGAN

Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people.

There's something about the impact of a big screen that means something to me, even though I realize almost every film is fated to be seen for a year in theaters, and then forever after on television.

I was nearly a teen-ager before I stopped assuming that everyone I met was Jewish.

Teenagers all think their life is a movie. If you break up with someone or you have a fight, you walk around with movie scores playing in your head. You sort of see yourself suffering as you're suffering. There's a lot of melodrama attached to the real events of your life.

I still haven't quite caught on to the idea of writing without dialogue. I like writing dialogue, and there's nothing wrong with dialogue in movies.

It's not a character flaw to become an adult.

I grew up going to the movies, not watching them on television, so I'm still a bit resistant to TV as a medium.

I'm always struck when I go somewhere I've never been before, especially if it's in my home town, by just how different the atmosphere can be, and how disorienting it can be - especially if there's any kind of trouble.

I feel like if you can describe something fully and accurately, then people will be able to see it themselves - they don't need be told what to.

Little kids grow up discovering the world that's shown to them and then when you become a teenager, it kind of shrinks a little bit. I think when you get past that point, one of the important things is that you see there is more to the world than yourself.

I wrote a play once called 'Lobby Hero,' which I thought turned out very well, but there's no final version of it. I published the one we produced, but there are seven other versions with different variations sitting in my desk at home.

There are a lot of elements when you're writing, or when I'm writing, that are sitting in the back of your mind. I try to let them stay there, because they find their way in more naturally that way.

'You Can Count On Me' took 20 days to shoot, and we had 50 days to shoot 'Margaret.'

The really funny comedies to me are always the ones that are played the straightest or given the most emotional content. And when people start making faces and setting things up and commenting and winking at you, I don't find that to be very funny.

I remember the kind of teenager I was, the kind of teenager I wanted to be, and then the kind of teenagers that were all around me. Life is lived on such a big scale in those years - and such an embarrassing one as well.

Many movies about people recovering, moving on, and redeeming themselves are really wonderful and inspiring. But I think the more sentimental ones that are less good make me feel isolated - like, if you can't pull yourself up by your bootstraps like the guys in the movies, there is something wrong with you. That's a shame.

I think 'Manchester' is really about grieving and trying to get on after something terrible has happened to an adult, and a whole life being destroyed, and then, what are the forces that keep him involved with the people he loves? They love him, and they won't let him go.

I've done a lot of assignment work in my life, and the only way you can do it is to make it your own as quickly as possible, and then you give it back.

I do a lot of improvising when I'm writing, and I work very hard on the scripts... they are written very much in an actor-friendly way.

Truthfully, and I don't mean to sound naive, but I don't know that much about the film business.

I'm always really interested in different environments and how they affect people's lives and what it would be like to live somewhere else.

I love 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind.'

I remember yelling at my mother one time, horribly. I was in tenth grade or something like that, and I hadn't done something, and she misunderstood because my stepfather told her something that was wrong that I hadn't done.

'Margaret' as a creative entity is something that I'm very happy and proud of. But 'Margaret' as a professional experience was a nightmare until it was rescued by critics and people who liked it.

My personal pride is not strong enough to make me brave. But I don't know why I equate being brave with fighting.