America must be the teacher of democracy not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard.

Ostensibly rigorous and realistic contemporary conservatism is an ideology of denial. Its symbol is a smile button.

A realist in Venice would become a romantic by mere faithfulness to what he saw before him.

I don't ever want to be a sentimentalist. I prefer to be a realist. I'm not a romantic really.

I had these kind of unrealistic expectations that were fueled by romantic comedies and it has both helped me and hurt me in many ways. It helped me because in general they've made me hopeful. I just figure things will eventually work out for me. But nobody is like any Tom Hanks character. Nobody is Hugh Grant. No one is Meg Ryan!

When I've had hard times in my life the one thing about being in TV is that it's positive. I withdrew to 'Cheers ' it was familiar in that it was family. It had a kind of realistic positiveness to it.

I was influenced by surrealist poetry and painting as were thousands of other people and it seems to me to have become a part of the way I write but it's not.

Stylized acting and direction is to realistic acting and direction as poetry is to prose.

I've kind of come to the conclusion that what passes for realism in movies has nothing to do with reality and that my stuff is more realistic than that.

People talk about mumblecore but I prefer bumblecore hyper-realistic bee movies about how bees really are.