JEFF NICHOLS

I think plot is very overrated. Plot is obviously necessary, but what I really care about is emotionally affecting the audience. Having a thought myself and then an emotional experience myself, somehow transferring that to the audience.

I know how to write a movie. I know how to direct a movie.

We've gotten to a point where it costs so much money to make a movie that directors and filmmakers feel they have to make sure that everybody gets it. And that's an unfortunate development, I think, in a lot of narratives floating around in the film industry.

It takes people being alone in front of the computer at three in the morning to write opinions about movies, apparently.

I wrote 'Mud' for Matthew McConaughey and had never met him.

I like scripts. I spend a lot of time writing them.

People ask me about past projects I've worked on, and other things; I'm just really bad at lying. I have a bad poker face, so I just try to tell people how I'm feeling in the moment and really what I was trying to do.

Actors are real. It's a real skill, and it exists, and talent really exists.

There's a rhythm and a cadence in a scene, and when an actor understands without any real direction from you, then that's a very valuable gift. And some people get it, and some people don't.

I've been just unsuccessful enough not to have been given a big opportunity too soon.

I think only the movies you do remember are the films you had an emotional connection to.

I care about narrative structure; I care about how stories unfold.

Write dialogue that supports the situation and the characters, as you find them.

The more we try to control our kids and create who they are and where they're going, the more that will fall apart. That's a dangerous thing. So you need to actually manage the fear and figure out who your kids are. Who do they want to be and how can you help shape that, but not control it.

I'm really calculating when it comes to these scripts - I'm really calculated about character behavior and dialogue.

The funny thing about 'Take Shelter' is that a lot of people talk about how it was allegory for the economy and things that were to happen. And that was so on the nose in the movie for me. I was like, 'That's obvious.' It's the other stuff about marriage and commitment and those other things that I spent the most time thinking about.

As a director, you see something in someone; you know it's there, you just got to go get it. You do that with any actor. That's your job.

It's amazing how far you can get into a plot before you figure out what you're doing.

I think too often in films, people think endings are a summation of plot, and I don't like that. Because once you know where you're going as an audience member, then it's like a video game. You're just waiting for them to get through the levels and beat the bad guy. And I just think that's boring.

I found filmmaking to be a very practical art form. It's about figuring out how to create within the very practical limitations/constraints of time, money, and large groups of collaborators.

I haven't seen 'Room' yet. People tell me 'Room' is such an amazing film, but ever since I had a kid, I just can't. I can't do it. It's not fun. It's not a place I want to be.

Nature is the purest thing we can touch and observe. It can be the most beautiful and also the most devastating.

We have so many films that we can fit into the slate a year, and we spend $100 million on those films in order to make $400 million dollars. We don't spend $20 million in hopes of eking out $40 million.

What Richard and Mildred Loving did was, by their nature, not by any calculus, they separated themselves from the political conversation. They did not have an agenda. They did not want to be martyrs. They did not want to be symbols of a movement.

'Indiana Jones' was me growing up. I could quote lines from 'Tango and Cash' as much as I could quote lines from 'The Searchers'.