When I go to movies and I love the movie, it's because it feels like it articulated something about how we're living now, and also gives me some insight into my own life. I feel actually altered after having seen it.

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.

In college, you're kind of designing who you want to be. And I wanted to be a big reader.

I think the word 'earnest' kind of has a negative connotation on some level. I think one of the things that's happened is that being cynical is somehow conflated with being sophisticated. I think that's problematic, to say the least.

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.

Even though I occasionally appear on it, I don't watch television.

I know not everyone starts out reading high literature. If you read enough you might be drawn to some other things, so maybe those vampire books are what they call 'gateway books.' I just coined that term. I don't know if there's a thing called 'gateway books.