There was an age in which it was clear to me that my parents weren't perfect, but then there was an age at which I had empathy for that. And that was through therapy, probably. You have to rebuild and you also have to grow in your understanding of whatever it is your parents are facing, and that takes a major, profound shift of perspective from being a child.

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.

I try not to articulate ideas in the film once I've arrived on the plot and the characters. I believe that if I focus my attention with enough compassion and heart on those things, then other things will be revealed, and that's from the education that I've had from the novel.

To be a creative person and be a professional, as an artist you have to be able to withstand pain, rejection, and for some, a lot of bad feelings, but you have to be able to look through those.

I think parenting well is not so different than trying to consider how to be successful at any relationship. Like, how do you partner well? How do you collaborate well? How do we have this conversation well? You know, you're always trying to figure out what "well" means, so I think parenting is another version of that.

I've worked with non-professional actors, I've worked with movie stars, I've worked with kids, I've worked with older people, and I've found my job as a director is to cast them well and to understand what they need on set to bring the material to life.

People, for reasons of kind of security, they tend to move towards people like themselves.