You are always factoring in the economy within the process of creating something, and making decisions that seem both fearless and full of fear.

The big change that's happened for me in terms of my own life and how outsidership is reflected in my work is that I used to feel extraordinarily isolated in my life as I was trying to figure out who I was and how to have intimate relationships. And so my central characters also were isolated and usually in quite a bit of pain.

All history is defined by shifting modes of reality and time and how things change. That’s what I love about cinema. It changes in the moment.

I can be incredibly angry with someone, I can be incredibly critical, but... I went through a period where I was reading a lot of memoirs of guards in holocausts and serial killers. I like to understand why people do bad things.

I'm a version of the same person.

I actually feel that all drama has an element of comedy in it. A great deal of that I learned from writers like Chekhov who called his plays his comedy even when they touch on tragedy.

I try to keep feeling what's going on and try to use the camera, the actors and the design to enhance those feelings. There's something really emotionally direct and honest about how I put the material with the images. You hope that the strength of mise-en-scene comes from an honesty towards the material. You also hire really well.