I tend not to think that anything I happen to be reporting on in my films is special. Meaning that people are always saying to me, 'you must love New York, you have it in all your films.' But mostly it's because I know New York, and I know Brooklyn at this time. I know the lives there, because I have lived in them.

My early films were about self discovery, and films of internal conflict. At that level, they were very personal.

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.

I have a career now, and I have to say, five years ago I didn't. I'm 50, and you never know what works, but I think part of that is because - in this way that can't be defined but which can be examined - we cannot work alone.

To me, honesty and the difficulty of honest communication are at the heart of both my life and my movies. The difficulty of being yourself.

The praise helps on a deep level, which gives you the grounding that encourages you to trust yourself. On another level, each film is a risk, and the praise doesn't save you from that risk.

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.