I'm really influenced by Southern novelists, not many movie people. More like John Faulkner, William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Flannery O'Connor, John Steinbeck, and people like that.

I've danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.

Directing is a big responsibility to take on. I think I'm only good at doing things I know very well. I don't direct movies because I get offered the new vampire movie or science fiction movie. I don't get offered those, anyway, but if I did, I would just tell 'em, "Look, I'm the wrong guy." I only do things about people and situations, and I do the ones that I think I'm the best guy for the job on, which is usually something I generate myself.

I write songs on guitar and that's about how good of a guitar player I am. I can write songs on it.

I generally have lyrics first, but you can't help that when you're writing lyrics you start to get a melody in your head. So they come kind of simultaneously.

My songs aren't built around choruses or hooks or anything like that. That's kind of how I write screenplays too.

Sometimes we don't want the bad guy to get caught because otherwise the story is over. You want to at least see it through to the end.