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

One thing I'm most proud of, in my movies, is that I think the performances are super-strong, but that's not all me. I think part of it is casting appropriately.

It's not our job to play judge and jury, to determine who is worthy of our kindness and who is not. We just need to be kind, unconditionally and without ulterior motive, even - or rather, especially - when we'd prefer not to be.

We don't have a lot of space in our imaginations to allow people to expand what they do.

I've always been attracted to ensembles. When I started doing plays in high school and in college, I always loved the community aspect of it. I loved these little families that would develop.

If I’m feeling something, I have a lot of different ways to express it, you know? I can write an article about it. I can write a screenplay about it. I can act in someone’s thing.

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.