If I even tell anything false, within one minute I have to come clean. And I think most people, even if they're not that direct, it comes out in indirect ways. If somebody cheats on you, they end up telling you they've been spending all this time hanging out with that person. Why? Because nobody can bear a lie. A lie won't stay silent. It makes noise.

The first thing a fascist regime does is burn books. To not have them around would mean to make sure they're not written in the first place.

If we educate ourselves, then the desire and need to have art as a part of our lives will happen organically. I would invite anyone to look at cultures where art is squashed. Do you want to live in North Korea? We have a president who doesn't read at all. There's a lot to worry about. I just wish, as a collective, we were much smarter.

I am a lifelong career artist, which itself is a bit of a miracle. It's really challenging to be a career artist. I would say that the argument for grant funding is not only did my movie do some social good - hopefully it opened people's eyes - but you created a working artist. I'm hiring cinematographers, I'm hiring production designers, I'm hiring producers.

A good horror film is something that taps into something absolutely truthful about us - about what we want, about what we're terrified of - and brings that to life on screen in such a way that we can get close enough to that character to let our defenses down and want them to be safe.

I don't make movies about issues. This is my same litmus test for all the movies I love: Is it a great character on a great emotional quest with a great emotional need? Do they overcome great emotional obstacles? Is it a fantastic story? I didn't set out to be a political activist. I'm just a human being who's moved by certain things, and if certain things break my heart, I set out to fix them.

I think it's always a challenge when you're telling a story that people know. But hopefully, good storytelling - well, there's two things. One is, you definitely have to have surprises and changes so that people are - you keep them interested, you take them down roads that they didn't expect and give them suspense and surprise.