Spike Jonze quotes:

I like people that define their own values. I am much more interested in somebody who has their own definition of what they value, their own definition of what success is, their own definition of what love is.

I definitely liked the Muppets. I definitely liked Yoda in 'Empire Strikes Back' and Chewbacca. I don't know if I was a fan of puppets or those, like, specific characters.

The strengths and failings of a relationship depend entirely on your ability to talk about your feelings.

If you focus your energy on the camera, it takes away from the time you have to focus on the performances.

As a parent, your perspective of childhood is through the eyes of this person that you care so much about and you just want the world to be great for them. You want their life to be easy and happy.

The thing I remember most about having a tantrum is not the rage during the tantrum, but the being freaked out afterwards, and embarrassed, and guilty. It's scary to lose control of yourself.

It's fun when you start a movie, because it's kind of like you get to go Christmas shopping... you get to make your wish list and you start thinking about what each character needs.

I think at the beginning of a project, you decide if you're in love with the idea and what it's about, or what you think it's about at that time at least. Then you commit to it, and once you've commit to it no matter what, no matter how many self doubts you have, you're in it. The ship's sailed, you can't turn around.

If you compromise what you're trying to do just a little bit, you'll end up compromising a little more the next day or the next week, and when you lift your head you're suddenly really far away from where you're trying to go.

I think because I'm not a parent, my most immediate connection to childhood is my memory of my own childhood.

Nicolas Cage, I would love to work with him again. He's just a fearless madman. He'll go anywhere you want to go. He would not say 'no' to anything.

I love when me and my friends don't know how to make something - there's that risk of failure, which should be there. If it's guaranteed not to fail, it's something you already know how to do.

Be willing to get fired for a good idea.

Obviously technology has become such a big presence in our lives and, I definitely know, in my life.

I knew I could write infinitely about relationships. That's the most beautiful, most confusing, most rewarding, most heartbreaking thing in our lives - and not just romantic relationships: that's all relationships.

I love people that willfully defy what you're supposed to be and create their own definition of their selves.

The Beastie Boys are guys I loved before I met them, and when I got to know them, we started a magazine together, and we started making videos together, and a lot of it came out of us just cracking ourselves up, like going to the fake mustache store and buying fake mustaches.

I worked at this bike shop called Rockville BMX, and I started going on this summer tour with this one company. One summer, we ended up in California, and I got to hang out with the guys who made 'Freestylin' - Andy Jenkins and Mark Lewman.

I skated and rode bikes on ramps, and my mom was always super supportive. She was one of the only divorced moms in the neighborhood, so all the other parents looked down upon her for letting her kids do that kind of thing.

I guess a lot of things I make are relationship movies. Maybe all movies are relationship movies, because they're all about how we relate to each other.

I think the way kids create is so inspiring. They're drawing a picture? They love the picture they drew; they're not tortured about it.

I'll still make movies for studios, but my editing process will be much further removed from the studio system. Because I don't understand it. I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies. So if that's how they do it, then I don't think I want to do it.

If I can make one generalised statement, and generalised statements are never entirely true, nobody wants to be talked down to, kids included.

Emotions are messy and hard to figure out. Hard to know where you start and the next person stops. Even as an adult, that's a hard thing to know. As a kid, it can be really confusing, because it's all new and you're trying to sort of make your map.

Everything in L.A. is - it's just an easy place to live in. The houses are nice, the backyards are nice, you got the ocean right there and the mountains behind you; there's an idealised easiness to the way you live and the whole environment.

I think if something's emotionally real - and I'm not even talking about in movies or in art, but in life - you can't really argue with that, even if your intellectual mind might know differently.

A great poem leaves so much room for everybody to have such a different reaction to it.

When you're close to somebody, you can never really know how they're experiencing the world.

As a director, you never get to watch other directors work, and you also don't get to collaborate with other directors that much.

I think, as you're growing up, your emotions are just as deep as they are when you're an adult. You're ability to feel lonely, longing, confused or angry are just as deep. We don't feel things more as we get older.

Music is thousands and thousands of years old and I don't think that basic, primitive connection to the language of music ever changes.

After 'Where The Wild Things Are,' which was this big, long five-year project, I spent a year making small things.

After 'Where the Wild Things Are,' I guess I felt more confident as a writer.

I like naps. I don't drink coffee.

I'm fortunately not, like, typecast. I don't have to just do one kind of thing; I can do all kinds of things that reflect different parts of me.

I respect people that are die-hard film people, but I started on video. I started on Hi8 video and mini-DV, and I made skate videos. So, I love film, and I love the way it looks, but I also love the way crappy video looks, or VHS. I've always been a fan of whatever the look is that's appropriate for what the feeling is.

The best videos were the ones where I became friends with the artists first.

I like hiring people based on a feeling - this person gets it - rather than what they've done in the past.

I have a home phone number, and I like it! It's like a throwback already.

Any conversation I have with anybody that's real is always revealing and inspiring.

I would love to make video games.

You get a buzz when getting texts: 'Oh, someone's thinking about me.'

I definitely check my phone for texts a lot - like, 'Did anyone text me? Is anyone thinking about me? Does anyone love me?'

Kids are so fiercely opinionated, that if they love the Harry Potter books and they go see the movie, they'll be the first to say, 'That was wrong! They didn't get that right!' They're storytellers themselves. They're critics. They're going to have the critical opinion.

I'm in awe of directors like the Coen brothers who can shoot their script and edit it, and that's the movie. They're not discovering the movie in postproduction. They're editing the script they shot.

When I'm making stuff, the thing that excites me most is not the result, but the process and trying to do something I've never done before.

Emotions are messy and hard to figure out.

I definitely enjoy getting to know people I find inspiring.

Big emotions that are unexplained are really scary. At least to me.

Don't differentiate between "This is a job" and "This is what I'm doing for fun." It's all simultaneous.

Our subjectivity is so completely our own.

I've got to say, I've probably seen a lot more of the Three Stooges than of the Marx Brothers.

Don't differentiate between 'This is a job' and 'This is what I'm doing for fun.' It's all simultaneous.

Felt is not the easiest thing to animate. It's very flimsy.

Arcade Fire has such intimacy and epic-ness, at the same time, and that's really inspiring.

I met Arcade Fire on their first record, 'Funeral.' I loved that record, and it was a record I was listening to while I wrote 'Where the Wild Things Are.' Those songs - especially 'Wake Up' and 'Neighbourhood' - there's a lot of that record that's about childhood.

Is artificial intelligence less than our intelligence?

I think the way Win Butler writes, I really identify with it. He writes very emotionally and very cinematically, and I just connect with his sensibility.

I like the idea of the documentary as a portrait. There's not a chronological beginning, middle, and end structure. You build something in the editing room that's shaped by getting to know the person and digging deeper, unpeeling the layers of them as you get to know them.

I want to make films without a single clear message, and films that are as close as possible to what it feels like to be alive. At least to me.

I'm a little slow, so forgive me if I'm inarticulate.

I remember when MySpace came out. It did do something pretty incredible - which was unite people around the world with common interests and common tastes.

I've done the thing where I stop being communicative, and I've been on the other side where the other person isn't communicating, and I become frustrated.

Doing a documentary is about discovering, being open, learning, and following curiosity.

I'm always amazed when any actor can decipher my direction.

As creatives, it's a hard thing to push, to make something you're truly excited about, especially if you've written 100 different concepts and they keep getting shot down.

On set, there's a lot of pressure. But it sort of heightens the moments.

I'm hesitant to make grand statements because I feel like that it's not exactly what I'm writing about.

On everything I do I'm always taking someone's money, whether it's a movie studio or a record label. Somebody's paying for it, and I'm always respectful of that. But I'm never going to compromise.

The world is becoming nicer and easier, but that doesn't mean we are any less lonely or any more connected.

What I learned from the Beastie Boys was to be independent. They set up their own world separate from the label. They built their own studio.

I don't know what life was like 1,000 years ago, but I imagine there was the same struggle: people trying to connect with each other.

The invention of the iPod changes how you use music. Suddenly you have music everywhere.

I always aspire to that, where it feels like the film was made by the characters as opposed to the filmmakers. I try to be invisible.

I like Kanye, and I care about him.

You can go on Nike's website and choose exactly what fabrics and colours and shapes you want your sneakers to come in.

Chris Cooper I got to work with many times.

Even in this world where you're getting everything you need and having this nice life, there's still loneliness and longing and disconnection.

I am better at math than spelling.

I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.

I feel like everything I make is personal to me.

I feel like you only have so much time to make stuff. I'm definitely aware of that. I'm also excited about it.

I just want to make whatever is exciting.

If I leave my phone in the car and go to dinner or something for a few hours, I'm very proud of myself.

I'm not one to intellectualize why I did something.

The past is just a story we tell ourselves.

The things that are really out of control, and scary, are emotions - of people around you, that are unpredictable, or those in yourself which are unpredictable.

What the world is like from a nine-year-old's point of view? My memory is that nothing is explained to you, you've got to try to figure it out, pick up clues from the people around you, try to figure it out from their reactions.

You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.

You make a movie that is about what you want it to be about and let people have their reaction to it.