"I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing."

"I had a number of very strong personalities in my family. My father was a concert flutist, the solo flute for Toscanini."

"I wanted to write and direct movies and not be forced to adapt them from a bestselling book."

"They needed someone to write a script of The Great Gatsby very quickly for the movie they were making. I took this job so I'd be sure to have some dough to support my family."

"We're trying to set up a movie for me in the near future. It's going to be similar to the story of how I got discovered. Kinda like my own version of '8 Mile.'"

"I wrote my graduate thesis at New York University on hard-boiled fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, so, for about two years, I read nothing but Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, James Cain and Chester Himes. I developed such a love for this kind of writing."

"My name is James Guckert. Well, when you read it, it's always pronounced some other way."

"I don't write poetry and then strum some chords and then fit the words on top of the chords."