When sailing if you miss a degree every day, eventually you’ll be going in the exact opposite direction.

There are very few people that actually live their life in a Mother Theresa kind of benevolence. And even bad guys are often trying to be the “most right” version of themselves. So I’m trying to explore what basically makes these guys human.

When I’m writing a movie, it’s usually pretty close to what the movie is going to be, which is just a luxury of being a writer-director.

I’m a huge fan of the films of the ’70s and even into the ’80s, Sidney Lumet, all those films that used what was going on in people’s lives as drama. And not only are you entertained, but hopefully have a greater understanding of your world coming out of it.

I don’t know how you make decisions in your life, but I weigh lots of things, and it’s not always the purest of things for why I take a job or do this. I always try to think of the many different factors in my life, and not one is pure greed. One is pure quality of life.

To have a second movie that you’re proud of and that actually turned out the way you wanted, shot by shot, I realize I’m probably going to be able to do this for a little while for my living.

I had decent but not great grades in high school because I was highly motivated in some subjects, like the arts, drama, English, and history, but in math and science I was a screw-up. Wooster saw something in me, and I really flourished there. I got into theatre, took photography and painting classes.

That’s what film can do in a way that TV and other long-form storytelling can’t. It gives you this very immersive moment.

I wrote ‘All is Lost’ while editing ‘Margin Call’. I did that long before I knew if I was ever going to get to make another movie.

As a writer, I had learned a lot on ‘Margin Call’ about embracing the weaknesses of a narrative and of a project. A story always has an inherent narrative weakness.

The original Spencer Tracy version of ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ was always terribly flawed because of the over-reliance on voice over, but it’s still a beautiful movie.

Everything we’ve done for the last 17 years—there’s nothing to show for it.

You cannot stay! They will find us.

It’s always a little harder than you think it’s gonna be.

You’ve been shot five times for your country, and you can’t even send your kids to college. If we’d accomplished have the things that we’ve accomplished in any other profession, we’d be set for life. The question is: Do we finally get to use our skills for our benefit?

If you’re not gone forever after you make your move, we are dead.

This is not what I signed up for.

We need to hunt quickly.

We’re gonna get Gabriel Martin Lorea. Head of one of the biggest drug cartels. I’ve got estimates he’s got over 75 million dollars in cash.

First things first. Any man here that wants to walk away can do so knowing they’re the best of us. But it’s gotta be now. There is no ground support.

Make no mistake about it. You guys need to own the fact that we do not have the flag on our shoulders. You cannot go back to your normal life after tonight. You guys need to own the fact that what we’re about to do is criminal.

I consider myself somewhat spiritual, but not practicing.

I think my films kind of walk this line that Im proud of, that they feel sort of like films of my youth, which were far more commercial.

I did not grow up a cinefile. No one in my family was in the film business or even anything close to it.

We print money. The people that print the money is actually us. The government of the United States of America. By its very nature, we control that, and this system is there as representation of us.

I had a caricature view of the guy in the beret with the big megaphone­­, but a movie director and writer was beyond my role of understanding.

When you’re on a boat, it is this tiny little island where you have to be completely self-sufficient.

There is certainly a part of my filmmaking that harkens to a more simpler commercial kind of taste, but then with this theres certainly a kind of avant-garde, abstract, existential element to it.

When I have people around, I’m a chatterbox. But when I’m alone, I never speak. I don’t talk to myself; it’s just not my schtick.

When it feels scary to jump, that’s exactly when you jump. Otherwise you end up staying the same place your whole life. And that I can’t do.