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 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 do love the young adult novels as a form and genre, because it has a purity of intention and heart.

The questions of economics, and how they infect, or rather how they affect intimacy. And that's probably the subject of all my films.

Everything encourages you not to tell stories of gay lives. There is no economy yet for that kind of cinema.

I love a certain kind of acting style that I would call non-American, which tends to be more detail-oriented and less externalized. There's a kind of naturalism that I often find in non-American actors. I also find that quality in the American actors I work with, but I like to bring in those influences creatively.

To come to change, there had to be conflict and pain.