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.

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.

I like violence because I like looking at it and I like understanding emotional and physical violence and how they work with one another... It's operating in all these levels of hopefully - Oedipus is one of my favorite stories, that's like falling down a well when you read that - so that would be the hope, that each thing causes the next.

Art changed my life. I mean, I would say art saved me. I believe that it made me better at handling my life.

Chloë Moretz as Carrie has an inherent amount of charisma, the camera loves her, she's been acting since she's five, she's a total pro, she knows her instrument. I took her on this phenomenal journey from a confident child star who has the great privileges of a family who loves her, great success, and huge confidence, to a wounded woman who had to gain her confidence back and desperately wanted love and acceptance.

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.

If you're writing in the mainstream... Whatever that is - the norm. The norm is likely going to be funded because you're giving people what they're used to and what they're gonna get. But anything outside of that norm is going to struggle to get funded. The people who are not "the norms" deserve the chance to make art. I think it's great for all of us to consume all these voices, and that happens when you support these voices that need to be supported because they're not the automatic choice coming out of the gate.