Tom Noonan quotes:

When I first started acting, somebody once said to me that anything that is a problem that prevents you from getting a job will eventually be a strength. It works both ways. The odder you are, the harder it is to get work, but once you sort of establish it, you have no competition.

To me, acting doesn't really feel that different, one job to another.

I don't think you go to a play to forget, or to a movie to be distracted. I think life generally is a distraction and that going to a movie is a way to get back, not go away.

When I was a little kid, no matter what my parents told me, I would always argue - even if I agreed with them. And I've always been a show-off. As I've gotten older, I've found ways to be more subtle about it, but that's the way I am. I suppose that has something to do with why I write and direct.

I think that's what happens when you get scared, and you're rushing, and you don't have time. Rather than cut things out and take a chance, and build things up you think are working, you cut everything down a little bit, and everything sort of suffers.

. . . the whole idea of WHAT HAPPENED WAS.... is not about dating. It is more about people who are not committed to who they are or are indifferent about their life in general, which is how I felt about myself when I wrote it. I had turned 40 and I was unhappy and I wanted to write about that. Dating just became the framework. . . . I like all those fringy, weird, nonverbal, quiet, tiny little things, those powerful interchanges between people, things that go unsaid, that people know are happening all the time but nobody wants to talk about. That's what I want to make movies about.

Making bad people seem human is the key to making them really scary.