We never did things as we were supposed to do. That was part of our ethic. We did what felt right to us, not what someone told us we should do.

Grief and memory go together. After someone dies, that's what you're left with. And the memories are so slippery yet so rich.

I would hate to think I'm promoting sadness as an aesthetic. But I grew up in not just a family but a town and a culture where sadness is something you're taught to feel shame about. You end up chronically desiring what can be a very sentimental idea of love and connection. A lot of my work has been about trying to make a space for sadness.

I am intrigued by inanimate objects. They're a piece of history, someone's statement and ideas of life.

Humans are vulnerable, messy little animals and that's normal. And all I want to do is make a space for that in my films.

There's some movies I watch, they're kind of like my anti-anxiety pill, my anti-depressant pill. I watch them at least once or twice a month probably. And I never stop learning from them as a filmmaker.

As a son of a man who pretended to be one thing for 33 years of my life and then was another thing, the questions of 'what is real' and 'what is not real' are very blurrily vivid to me.