Theodore Melfi

NASA didn't give a crap what gender you were or what race you were. If you could do the math, you were valuable.

I have a very strict philosophy that if you're not working out, you're getting fat.

We don't have parades for mathematicians, we have parades for astronauts. You don't think about all the thousands of people who worked on that capsule and crunched the numbers and were integral in getting that into space.

As a director, you're open to any kind of criticism.

For me, as a feminist, as somebody who wants to lift up women - because I do; I come from a single mom who raised three boys on her own - I feel like, you close the door on women, you close the door on humanity.

The journey of making 'Hidden Figures' has shown me the automatic privilege that all white men are afforded in America in 2017 and in any and every year before that.

Life is laughter.

By the time I got to 'St Vincent,' I had shot so many scenarios I was ready for anything - I've shot kangaroos, I've shot dogs, cats, crowds, fight scenes, stunts, comedy, drama, handheld, dolly, helicopter, crane - I just felt that there was nothing I was unprepared for.

If you don't infuse humor into a subject matter, no matter how dark, the audience can't accept the message of a film. It closes them down. Humor can open them up.

If you don't have comedy in a movie, you don't have a movie.

I grew up in Brooklyn, in what I now know was poverty. Sharing a tiny bedroom with my two brothers, eating government cheese and passing down sneakers until they were unpassable... I simply thought the whole world lived as such, especially in pre-gentrified Williamsburg of the 1980s.

My wife says I have happy delusions. I'm delusional that way. I just say, 'This is how it's got to be, and it's got to be.' I don't take no. I just don't like no. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. That's just how I am.