I kicked college nostalgia in my late 20s. As much as I loved college and treasure the memories, I no longer want to go back.

I don’t think evil people or negative people are inherently interesting all the time. People who are good people getting better at being themselves - to me, that’s something that’s really interesting to watch.

Cynicism is kind of like folding your arms and stepping back and commenting on things, like the old guys in 'The Muppets,' just throwing out comments all the time, whereas there are other people on the ground really trying to affect things and improve their lives and the lives of other people. I think it's noble and I think it's cool.

All of the things I used to obsess over, I'm no longer as obsessed with. I have new concerns but they're a little more existential or cosmic.

And as a filmmaker, I'm trying to unhook myself from this idea that unless you have a brilliant, long, enormously lucrative theatrical run, that your movie somehow failed. And I don't believe that.

I actually have a thing about proper nouns. They clang on my ear in a weird way when I hear them dropped into movies.

An obsessive attention to the news, I've realized, only serves to paint a picture of the world as a throbbing blob of dysfunction, most news falling somewhere on a scale from disappointing to calamitous.