I have this natural thing in my head that when I sit down to write something serious, I tend to make jokes. I can't help it. I can't help but desire for the narrative to be as complicated and as truthful as possible. That's just the way my head works.

Racism is wrong, racism is very dangerous.

America is a different country, and it will forever be a different country, after the election of Donald Trump.

I love when scenes are intentionally and meticulously planned so we feel like this is a handcrafted scene that only works in this moment and this movie, and that's the way I approach my films.

I love films from all these different points of views that used the idea of the school as a way to talk about the American experience. It took me a while to figure how to write a movie like that, because that's not something you learn at film school

If the characters [in a movie] aren't real, if their lives aren't realistic, if you call bullshit at any point in their journey, then the rest of it is invalid.

I'm very interested in clans and the way people group together, and there's a lot of group shots. There's a lot of people in positions that people feel like they're in attack mode, kind of pointed at each other in the frame. I'm not a big fan of shooting something that looks like it could belong in any movie, I'm not a fan of okay, "wide shot, wide shot, medium shot, close-up, close-up, we'll figure it out in post." I hate that.