And I realized as I walked through the neighborhood how each house could contain a completely different reality. In a single block, there could be fifty seperate worlds. Nobody ever really knew what was going on just next door.

She should think about her own soul, what she was going to do with this funky tattered pond dank item. Dark and stained, a ruined thing.

The nearest I'd come to feeling anything like God was the plan blue cloudless sky and a certain silence, but how do you pray to that?

The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves. We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I.

It was only natural to want to destroy something you could never have.

To make films, you have to have boundless energy; you have to work and play with others really, really well, and I'm really a more contemplative kind of person. I like to sit at home and think, a lot.

I felt like an undeveloped photograph that he was printing, my image rising to the surface under his gaze.