Although I use myself in my videos, I really see myself as a character. When I look at myself, when I sit and edit, I never think, "That's me." I think, "This is a character, and how do I edit this to tell a story?"

I think my work is optimistic - as much as it is pathetic and funny and sad and ridiculous, at the end of the day it's about the hope that something will go right, and the constant wishing for a world where things might start to make sense.

I'm always afraid going into strange places, but I also choose carefully and listen to my instincts. These were men I could trust. I'm a pretty good judge of crazy versus sad. I prefer sad.

I think that fact alone levels everything. Slapstick amazes me, the folly of humans today, the Ponzi schemes, giving birth to eight babies at once, it's amazing... And I know, it's horrible to have your money stolen and all that, but those are amazing stories.

As people who make things, we have the ability to think of the most vile, awful things we can imagine, but it doesn't mean we believe those things. I allow myself to go places in my videos that I would never go in my real life.And I think that there has to be that place where you can create and not have to be living it in real life.

I feel like the men who end up in my videos, their biggest crime is being lonely. They're not violent, they're not scary people, they're just men who keep to themselves and have a hard time being social.

Photography has saved my life, over and over again.