Fears. Some of them are wounds that exist long before we exist.

My mom was always late. It drove me crazy as a child. So I’m always on time-or early.

There’s a tremendous amount of power that comes from not having to say yes.

It’s very hard for me to get a new car. It’s really hard for me to get a new house. It’s really hard for me to move on from the things that give me stability. I just … don’t. There’s a tenacity to that which is great, because I’m totally loyal. But that keeps you living in the past a bit. And it’s hard to embrace the future if you are continually holding on to who you used to be.

There are probably a series of moments that tell you what you are going to become. To me, that doesn’t mean a moment I thought, I’m going to be famous and get a bunch of Academy Awards. To me, it’s the moment that you know you will be the one who fulfills your mother’s vicarious power issues.

I love Los Angeles. I loved growing up here. I love living here. But it’s a different approach in life. If you have a problem, you just go to the beach. You play volleyball or something. There’s an external way of handling all your issues.

Often people think of strength as surviving. But I think it’s surviving intact, and there’s a big distinction.

My definition of a friend is somebody who adores you even though they know the things you’re most ashamed of.

All my films are about people in a spiritual crisis. The Beaver, for sure.

You couldn’t pay me to be in my twenties again. I didn’t know that I was ever going to be successful. I didn’t know if I would be able to ever afford a place to live. I didn’t know if I would take care of my family. These seem like dumb questions when you’re forty-five. But when you’re twenty-three, all these are just a bunch of question marks ahead of you. I can’t live with that anxiety.

The hardest thing about life in your forties is that it’s heavy. You have to take responsibility for it, because you made it heavy. You’re the one who wanted to have children. You’re the one who wanted to have a big job. You’re the one who wanted to have more than one house. You’re the one, and you have to take responsibility for those choices. I wouldn’t do it any differently, but part of me will always miss being light.

The second half of the job is trying to get that back.

People are always surprised when I say that I’m an atheist.

In my home, we ritualize all of them. We do Christmas. We do Shabbat on Fridays. We love Kwanzaa. I take pains to give my family a real religious basis, a knowledge, because it’s being well educated. You need to know why all those wars were fought.

Jonathan Kaplan was adamant that the rape scene in The Accused be everything that we rehearsed. There would not be one ad-lib. But even after going through a massive amount of rehearsal, after every take, three of the guys just started crying. They were a mess. I had to spend my time telling them, “It’s okay. I’m fine. Everything’s okay.” There was one guy who was not a mess at all. He was like, “My hair okay?” He was my buddy. That was the guy I could hang with because at dinner we just talked about his dog or his life.

Some part of my brain is fried in the mathematical department. I can’t retain numbers. If you tell me to be there at 9:30, I have to write it down because I remember 8:45 or 10:20. I can’t remember my phone numbers. I don’t know what eight times seven is. I’ve seen through the new occupational therapies how they isolate parts of the brain that are damaged. For me, it’s the whole abstract-number thing. But I can tell you a story about anything and remember it all.

Fear is the number-one emotion that we’re spending tremendous amounts of brainpower to cover up.

I can shop for stationery. Books. Little kids’ clothes I can do. Sporting goods. Hardware. But not my own clothes. I go into a clothing store and start shaking. There’s so much to pick from, and I never pick anything good. I have to rely on movies I make. I have in my contract that they have to give me whatever clothes my character wore. Because otherwise I wouldn’t have any clothes to wear.

The most interesting thing about being a parent is being witness and supporting what they already are. It’s standing there in awe. You get to be the one on the sidelines clapping.

In the end, winning is sleeping better.