I make dark dramas, movies about people living in desperate fear who then overcome that fear and find a heroic side to themselves.

I also feel like I've learned over the years what is not important, and that is also great: to know what is pointless to spend your energy on, to be more specific.

I make movies about people in spiritual crisis because it's a way for me to spend the time, the energy, the focus and the obsession to come to terms with my own spiritual crisis.

Eventually this all passes. The public horrors of today eventually blow away. And, yes, you are changed by the awful wake of reckoning they leave behind. Hopefully in the process you don't lose your ability to throw your arms in the air again and spin in wild abandon. That is the ultimate F.U. and - finally - the most beautiful survival tool of all. Don't let them take that away from you.

I spent a lot of time not in school, so I didn't have deep relationships with kids my own age.

I was raised with a single mom and we had a very specific, very particular relationship. She worked with me and my job. I was almost three and we traveled everywhere together and she was really in my life in a really profound way. The most significant relationship of my life. It was beautiful and also an incredible, difficult struggle. I know how creative that life is, and how difficult it is to figure it out.

When I think about what part of my college experience came back in my work experience, I feel like it was learning how to read deeper, learning how to keep filling the movie up with more and more resonance.