If a scene doesn't work on three levels - it's not advancing the story, the characters, and telling me something new - then put it in the trash.

I thought, "If I can make you feel what it's like for that first super-passionate love, other people might like that too," and, of course, they did.

I can go back to my very first movie, Thirteen, and think about that exact moment when I saw Nikki Reed and Evan Rachel Wood do their chemistry read audition together. It just came alive. I was filming it with a video camera and I was like, "I know I can make a good movie now."

As a director, when you cut scenes from a movie, you do it with the idea that it is making the story move forward and progress. Sometimes, you don't realize that something is actually a sidetrack for the story, or it takes the tension out of a scene.

Since I was a little kid, I did like fairy tale. I did dress up like Little Red Riding Hood. My mom had to make me a cape.

Sometimes, a scene goes on too long and, with this being a suspense story and murder mystery that you're trying to discover through her heightened paranoia, you don't want scenes that take you on a tangent. Sometimes, you love those scenes, but you know that it's better not to be in the overall film. So, I'm not sad that they're not in the main movie, but I do think it's fun for people to get to watch them, if they want to.

You can't really just think, "Oh, I want to make something that is going to appeal to every single person in the world." You have to just try to make a movie that comes from your heart.