Noah Baumbach

“Even fairly serious moviegoers can't shake this shadow of the corporate world.”

“I've had great experiences or joyful experiences making a movie that people found very disturbing.”

“Dance is a profession with an expiration date for many people.”

“There was a telemarketing job one summer in high school that I was rejected for. I still walk by the building that I actually had the interview in. It's still in New York, and I always think about that job and why I didn't get it.”

“Other people have worked with big studios and maintained control over their movies. I see no reason why it wouldn't work for me.”

“As a kid, I thought of myself as a funny person who secretly wanted to be serious, but now I think maybe I'm a serious person who secretly wants to be funny.”

“My dad was a great movie companion. He wouldn't diminish 'The Jerk.' If I liked it, he liked it. He could see it through my eyes.”

“I like shooting in New York because I have such a connection to the city. I have so many memories there.”

“I don't like when you necessarily know that this is the end of the movie. I like when a movie ends abruptly. You go through this, and some of the scenes are uncomfortable, and some are funny - and then suddenly it's over.”

“Truffaut loved Hitchcock.”

“I was late to the Knicks. My dad was a big fan. But I first started watching baseball; I became a Red Sox fan. My dad was a Mets fan. I wanted to have my own team and league.”

“It's funny, I'm very analytical in my real life, but in terms of my films, I try to not analyze them at all and let things just go into them and let them be what they are. I mean, people ask me to this day what 'The Squid and the Whale' stood for, and I have no idea except that it's an exhibit in the Natural History Museum.”

“It's always really special to be at the New York Film Festival, and always a real privilege.”

“Defining yourself by your taste is easier than defining yourself by any genuine stance on something.”

“I guess I'm interested in people who are very sophisticated in intellectual ways, while being completely off the mark in emotional ones, with these huge blind spots in terms of their own behavior.”

“I think I've always been drawn to the notion of talk as cinematic.”

“I still carry the residue of the pressure I felt as a child to read and appreciate the right books. Growing up, I never allowed myself to read beach reading. I was always plowing through Ford Madox Ford's 'Good Solider' or something I wasn't equipped to understand.”

“Woody Allen's movies are so much a part of me. I grew up watching them over and over and would read all his comic pieces for the New Yorker. In some ways, his influence is so much there that I can't even locate it any more.”

“Adaptations are fun for me because they connect to the idea of filmmaking I had when I was a kid. I would see a movie and think: 'I'm gonna make that movie.'”

“I read all the time. Sometimes I get asked if I've thought about writing a novel.”