Quotes from Alexander Payne

Omaha, like Rome, is built on seven hills.

I think cynicism lasts. Sentimentality ages, dates quickly.

I guess maybe I try to make movies that are closer to real life than are many Hollywood movies. But I still try to stay within a commercial narrative, a contemporary American vernacular.

When you watch a movie, you don't want to feel like a machine made it. You want to feel a soul.

I get asked, 'How can you have such failures in your films?' Well, what else is life about? There's some sense of constant failure in something. Humor gives you a distance from it.