It`s more like can I build a group of characters and can I tell some universal truths that feel real and aren`t formulaic in the spirit of filmmakers gone by who`ve told American stories that were personal and universal as well.

People dance and we have a lot of music and... this might be the closet I get for a while.

Great music is its own movie, already. And the challenge, as a music fan, is to keep the song as powerful as it wants to be, to not tamper with it and to somehow give it a home.

Probably having fallen in love with music and movies at a young age and then first learning about writing by kind of following the path of writers like Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs and being a rock journalist.

Well it kind of is project to project because as a writer I think you always write to some degree about things that you know or things that happened - but my favourite filmmakers, my favourite movies of theirs tend to be the personal movies.

And I liked that whole idea that energy comes from not disseminating your ideas and talking about them.

Time puts things in proper perspective.

Stars arrive on their own timetable.

Well all kinds of movies that you wouldn`t expect that I`d want to do, both bigger scale and smaller scale than the ones I`ve done.

I have a desire to work with some actors I really like, so I hope to get out there soon and be back at it - maybe a little less music in the next one.

In the future, everybody is going to be a director. Somebody`s got to live a real life so we have something to make a movie about.

"Stars arrive on their own timetable."

"You can`t blame the actor [for a film`s failure]. It`s not math. It`s like catching lightning in a bottle." On Orlando Bloom and his role in Elizabethtown (2005).

"I just sort of fear that everybody does it now. Everything`s hip, every commercial`s hip. It almost makes you want to do a Mancini-type score, because nobody`s doing it. It would set itself apart more than a pop score now. So the goal was, in this movie, to try some different things." [on the score for Elizabethtown]

"I mean, Internet radio, which is basically a guy with his iTunes putting it over the computer, is the only way you`re going to get true eclectic music programmed."

"Little did I know that work-in-progress is a code for many things. In a press situation, it can mean the movie`s not going to come out. It can mean the movie`s not going to change at all, but if you don`t like it we`ll change it. Or it can mean the truth, which is it`s a work-in-progress."

"I`m proudest of the fact that I`ve been able to make a few movies in the studio system that are slightly unorthodox and personal. But it`s never quite as easy as you dream that it could be."

"It used to be, like, the sanctity of rock was that you could never let a song of yours be used in a commercial. It was like, `Oh man, we`ll never let our music be exploited that way.` Now they`ll call you up and say, `You gotta use this song in your movie, man. It`s the new VW ad! People love it.` And you realize, boy, have times changed."

"Making a big Hollywood film that really affects people is as hard as making a small movie on a credit card."