I wanted to be a director first to protect my writing. I'm a playwright and you don't need to protect your writing when you're in the theater because everyone's there to protect the writing. When I had an idea for a film that I really cared about as my own, I wanted to direct it, and then I immediately became interested in directing in and of itself because it's such a deep art. You suddenly have all these tools at your disposal to tell the story.

When you're a man, you're often in situations where you have to decide how far you're going to go in an argument. How big is the other guy? All this stuff that girls don't have to worry about as much, because that's not part of the equation.

Teenagers all think their life is a movie. If you break up with someone or you have a fight, you walk around with movie scores playing in your head. You sort of see yourself suffering as you're suffering. There's a lot of melodrama attached to the real events of your life.

I think the more dangerous and dire the political circumstances seem, the more you attach value to anything that shows you why a human being is a human being or human experience or view of the world in that way.

I take it as a sign of intimacy and friendship when you feel comfortable enough with someone to have a little rough and tumble.

Filmmaking, like any other art, is a very profound means of human communication; beyond the professional pleasure of succeeding or the pain of failing, you do want your film to be seen, to communicate itself to other people.

There's a few people who I've accumulated over the years who I really trust to show a first cut to and to be helpful rather than unhelpful.