That's the funny thing about cinema, it is an intellectual medium, but it's also sort of anti-intellectual.

Eventually, if you're the train that's leaving the station, people will race to catch up with you. I think that's one of the things I've figured out. You can't wait for permission to act, you just do; then people are like, "Oh, look at that person just doing over there. Maybe I'll come join them."

Living in Cuba made me unafraid of whatever could happen to me.

I learned from my parents the idea that, if you are devoted enough and you want to study something enough, you can really teach yourself anything.

For me, fantasy and speculative science fiction are the genres that feel closest to how I feel about being alive. Like, when I feel the most invigorated by just even a walk down the block in twilight, when the street lamps are just coming on and there's mist and some shadowy thing in silhouette in a window, I naturally invest all of those things with deep mythology and mystery and meaning. I think I need to believe in that version of reality because I get very scared when I don't.

For some reason, I have a very strange conception of time. I am constantly hovering at some overview, more macro.

I feel like I'm a much better person when I'm developing my imagination and my innocence and my vulnerability. I like that version of me better than the version where I'm just working on my analytical mind.