You discover two things when you're a teenager. One, that your parents are not the idols that you thought they were when you were growing up, if you had nice parents. And two, that you have power over them, and you can upset them and confront them and attack them.

Kenneth Lonergan

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.

Kenneth Lonergan

teenager fighting real

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.

Kenneth Lonergan

communication pain art

I often find myself writing about people taking care of each other, or trying to. And often seem to write about situations that are too big for the characters.

Kenneth Lonergan

writing character people

The world doesn't grieve when you're grieving. The world goes on about its business. You're having a good day and I'm having a bad one and vice versa. And they could be very good and very bad at the same time. You multiply that by seven billion and you have one element of human experience.

Kenneth Lonergan

good-day grieving world

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.

Kenneth Lonergan

able people needs

I trust my judgment when I think it's boring, dull, tepid and not interesting. That's important to listen to. And the same on the set. That's a little easier because you can see it in front of you and you can just see how great they are and you know you have something wonderful when they do something wonderful.

Kenneth Lonergan

important interesting thinking

When you have people like Casey [Affleck] and Michelle Williams and they want to do more takes you don't say, "Sorry, that's it." And I also don't like to say, "It's fine, it's great." Unless it's clearly there.

Kenneth Lonergan

sorry want people

I think the more dangerous and dire the political circumstances seem, the more you attach value to anything that shows you why a human being is a human being or human experience or view of the world in that way.

Kenneth Lonergan

political views thinking

I like to let the actors work the way they want to.

Kenneth Lonergan

actors want way

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

Kenneth Lonergan

flaws adults character

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

Kenneth Lonergan

tvs grew-up television

When you're a man, you're often in situations where you have to decide how far you're going to go in an argument. How big is the other guy? All this stuff that girls don't have to worry about as much, because that's not part of the equation.

Kenneth Lonergan

girl worry men

You can shoot a film in New York without seeing the Empire State Building. Or Starbucks...although the latter is much less realistic.

Kenneth Lonergan

empires film new-york

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

Kenneth Lonergan

mets assuming

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.

Kenneth Lonergan

impact mean years

The world is really heading in a very dangerous direction, it becomes that much more valuable and important to go to the movies and see human beings that are human beings.

Kenneth Lonergan

dangerous important world

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.

Kenneth Lonergan

caught writing ideas

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.

Kenneth Lonergan

atmosphere different home

There's a few people who I've accumulated over the years who I really trust to show a first cut to and to be helpful rather than unhelpful.

Kenneth Lonergan

cutting people years

I would love to take control of the entire universe and for five years you give every movie the same widespread distribution no matter what movie and see if there's a real discrepancy between people coming to see science-fiction films or superhero films. I seriously bet there would be no discernible difference.

Kenneth Lonergan

discrepancies-between real years