Actors are pretending for you, but they're not lying. They are not putting on a guise instead of themselves. They are finding things inside that they have experienced.

There is a drunkenness to grief, which is good.

I pretty much believe that a film is a film and when an audience watches a film, they finish it.

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.

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

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.