I don't really collect anything. I grew up in a family that collected things and then they'd get sick and people die and then they have their basements full of stuff that goes from one box to the next, so I try not to get sentimental with stuff. I just try to collect memories.

I feel like the job in editing is to let the movie tell you what it is. It's like sculpture. You just start taking away, you add a nose here, you cut off like the side of the cheek over here in the crease and you have a face. But it really reveals to you what it means to be over time, and if you have enough time.

I'm so sick of seeing guns in movies, and all this violence; and if there was going to be violence in Pines, I wanted it to actually be narrative violence. I wasn't interested in fetishizing violence in any way of making it feel cool or slow-motion violence. I wanted it to be just violence that affected the story.

When I made my student film, a feature, nobody wanted to talk to me and I was, like, in the desert for 12 years.

I always say writing is like dreaming, shooting is like living, and editing is like murder, because you take all these gifts that actors give you, and you cut them.

I want to get out of the way of the actors. I want to get out of their eye lines. I want to them to stop thinking they're making a movie. I want them to just go and live. It's like you take these great actors and put them in an aquarium of life, and just watch them swim. That's what makes editing tough because you get all these beautiful, unplanned moments.

Sidney Lumet is one of my favorite filmmakers. I feel like his approach to filmmaking was always so human. He was always making movies about the people. He wasn't about the tricks, you know what I mean? From 12 Angry Men on. Another film of his which I really, really love is Prince of the City, with Treat Williams, which is kind of a lost classic. Lumet is one of those film heroes that changed movies for everyone.