I wonder whether my bleak-o-meter is set differently from other people's. I have such passion for what I do that I can't see it as bleak. When people use that word, or “grim” or “gritty,” I just think, “Oh, come on, look a bit deeper.” My films don't give you an easy ride. I can see that. The sense I get is that people have quite a physical experience with them. They feel afterwards that they've really been through something.

I don't feel very revengeful in life at all.

I'm sure most of us remember being a kid and you have all of this endless time where two weeks before Christmas feels like ten years. I used to go to bed to try and go to sleep to try and make it go faster.

As long as you keep your budgets small, there's a way of making films.

I grew up in a working-class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know.

America is a huge country, of course. It's complicated. There's good, and there's not so good, and that's the same wherever you live.

I do believe some people can naturally act and don't know it.