I try to make things interesting and thought-provoking.

I love working with actors. I love visual things. I always intended to be a writer who directs and a director who writes.

I have a lot of anxiety about medical things for example. I don't think I'm particularly good at it, but I'd had the practice when I went into shooting Synecdoche. It can be somewhat gratifying, too, because I don't have that relationship with other adults where I need to comfort them or they come to me for that.

I don't subscribe to anything. I sit there and I try to think about what seems honest to me.

I know that as a very young child, I was afraid of death. Many children become aware of the notion of death early and it can be a very troubling thing. We're all in this continuum: I'm this age now, and if I live long enough I'll be that age. I was 20 once, I was 10, I was 4. People who are 20 now will be 50 one day. They don't know that! They know it in the abstract, but they don't know it. I'd like them to know it, because I think it gives you compassion.

You are what you love. Not what loves you.

I do have, at different times, a certain kind of self-consciousness in the world, an insecurity.