Quotes from Noah Baumbach

When you're around your family, and you have that history and that shared language, you say things you'd be embarrassed to hear quoted back to you later.

There's something really vulnerable about playing something that you like for someone. You don't know what their reaction will be.

Will Ferrell's made a lot of brilliant movies.

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.

Anyone who's putting money into your movie would always rather you cast well-known people.

I suppose some studio executive would say it's death for a comedy if people aren't all laughing in the same places, but I find with my movies that people laugh in very different places. I can't control it.

When you find yourself on the Internet when you're supposed to be writing, you've already lost. It's even beyond procrastination when you end up on the Internet.

I think if we taped a lot of families that claim to be relatively normal, you'd be surprised when you hear some of the things said.

Peter Bogdanovich is a good friend.

If you don't feel good about something, you don't shake it off easily.

I do think it's a very good way to describe what a great actor does. You're both acknowledging the authority of the director and the necessity of the actor to push back and find their own voice.

We expect forty-year-olds to have grown up at some point, and to be engaged and adult and take responsibility, and doing nothing would seem to go against that.

We all have these notions of cool that come about at different points in our lives, and it's interesting in how it evolves or doesn't evolve in different people.

Manhattan is so tailored. It's driven by appealing to the very wealthy and tourists.

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

'The Squid and the Whale' I shot in 23 days. I would have loved more time for it at the time, but in some ways that kind of kamikaze way of shooting was right for that movie.

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.

To this day, I have people I might meet who will make assumptions about my life based on fictional elements of 'The Squid And The Whale.' But I think that's par for the course if you make something that feels kind of real.

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

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

I can feel pretty critical of people, and I understand that sort of feeling of when you're going through something that's painful, taking it out on the world and projecting onto other people, finding faults with other people because it's harder to find faults in yourself.

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.'

'Frances Ha' is the closest final product to what I had in my head of any movie I've made. I'm not entirely even sure why that is.

I think sometimes bad behaviour can be liberating for certain people. They need to behave badly to find themselves - to go off path to find their path. You see it with kids all the time: They're testing boundaries, and I think that's healthy.