But, yeah, I'm really happy when I'm writing. When I'm being creative and when I have something that I can put down. You know, if you go out and you overhear a conversation or you have a thought, you have a receptacle to go home and say, 'Oh, this would be great in this script.' Your antenna's out in a different way, and I love that time.

No matter how dark things may get in a story, I feel it's the responsibility of the storyteller to leave the audience with at least a shred of hope.

I remember the first day I was looking at my hands and I thought about my nails. People wouldn't really be paying attention to that, but a Civil War doctor - What would they be doing with their nails? Would they cut them really low? And Dr. Burns said, "No, they would let them grow out so they can scoop stuff out. They would use their nails." So for a while I let my nails grow. They were too long. I kept stabbing myself by accident, so I cut them down, but I was trying to be faithful to the details.

I think a lot of Civil War stuff is written - As they say, history is written by the victors. And one of the things that I think is fascinating about this from a purely dramatic perspective is whether someone is right or wrong, you understand where they're coming from in this.

I think that the mark of a great book is that it will meet you wherever you're at and you'll feel and experience something new and different each time you read it.

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.

Kindness is not about instant gratification. More often, it's akin to a low-risk investment that appreciates steadily over time.