Marc Webb quotes:

There's a punk rock quality to Peter Parker, that I identified with when I read the comics [Spider-Man], and that I really liked. He has this chip on his shoulder.

It's such a thrilling part about being in a relationship at a young age, and all your feelings are apocalyptic, all your emotions are so huge.

We're creating a different universe with different rules and a different tone and different villains. We were very careful to honor the iconography of Spider-Man, but we wanted to tell it in a new and different way [in the film].

Geeks are running the world, anyone who's seen The Social Network knows the dynamic has shifted, but what I think is iconic and timeless about Peter Parker is that he's an outsider, on the outside looking in, and that was something I thought was very important to protect.

I was a Marvel guy. I started reading comics when I was a kid.

That Happily Ever After is a great way to tell stories when you're young but eventually it loses its meaning because it's just not true.

I think that Spider-Man is a part of our culture. He's a perennial character. He's something that's constantly reexamined and there are so many versions of him in the comics that it was something that I thought that we could do cinematically. He belongs on the big screen.

When you don't inherit an identity you have to define it on your own.

When you have to react to a lizard that's a tennis ball, it's a really, really difficult, tricky piece of craft.

Earnestness can ferment into sentimentality.

Romance: That's one of the things that makes Spider-Man really unique, in terms of the comic books. There is a tender, romantic quality to it. And certainly, that's something that's always fascinated me about the cinema: good romance.

Sundance is a really special place. They're very protective of movies, especially lower-budget movies.

I think one of the things about Peter Parker that is so great, and what has made him and Spider-Man last so long is he is a kid that we all feel connected to, he's not an alien, he's not a millionaire, he's just this kid that has trouble asking girls out.

For me, there were a few things in the Spider-Man comics that I thought were really interesting. There's this story about Peter's parents and where he came from, and I thought that it was really interesting to explore the emotional consequence of someone whose parents had left them, at a very young age.

Audiences can tell when you're being fake and they will eat you alive. But if you're doing something authentic they will connect to it and that can lead to commercial success.

I always remembered that when I saw people get married they got on a rocketship and went to Planet Happiness, Population: Them.

When you dont inherit an identity you have to define it on your own.

I just like that dynamic in relationships in movies where they're kind of lovers as rivals, you know?

There's a bigger universe at hand.

Everybody's part of the greater whole and skepticism and virtue are a part of that.

Working with the actors, working with production designers, working with the creative people who surround the process is really fun, it's really inspiring and I take great pleasure in working with them. That's what's most fun about directing.

I think it's really important, when you're redefining a character [ Spider-Man], for the audience to experience things that they haven't experienced, from the ground up. I wanted to build a character. I feel like point of view is a really crucial thing in the story, and that you need to build up the emotional building blocks, so that you can experience all the other emotions in a very specific way, rather than just experiencing it in an intellectual way.

I think that if you make something that's relatable then people will attach themselves to it. You can express it in a lot of different ways but I feel like as long as you are consistent and fair with the audience they'll engage irrespective of how they self-identify. I think it just gets too complicated to track all those differences between demographics.

I think that the dramas that you find in TV are actually a lot more interesting, typically, than what you find in cinema.

It's really hard to find just a simple character-driven drama, outside of a genre, that was available to direct, except for on TV.

It's very important to keep the emotions grounded, to keep the characters in some real place.

One of my life philosophies is that you have a choice to make when youre doing something creative. You can be cheesy... or you can be lame.

Something you can do in a comic that you can't do in a film is that you can have thought bubbles.

When you get that opportunity to be honest and open with somebody, for the first time, and share things about yourself that you haven't been able to share before, that you might be scared of or ashamed about, that's really exhilarating, and I think that's something that people will really identify with.