I started out writing when I was young; stuff about exposing the truth about how people are not what they appear, about how they are much more dysfunctional than they seem. Pulling back the curtain - that felt smart. But as I got older, exposing how frail people can be seems less and less deep.

People who write books - they live in their own world as they're writing. But people who are doing shows or big movies - not only are you writing this world that you're living in, but you're also simultaneously running a circus, and you can kind of start losing your mind like that.

I have had moments where I've had mental-health issues and I've felt like yoga and meditating and reading these Buddhist self-help books actually really help.

As a director or writer, you have to be so controlling.

I don't even give my scripts to friends because I just feel it's, like, I don't need one more set of opinions.

People don't go to see things in the theater for the same reasons that I do. And movies are about mass audiences. And so moviegoers are going for a different kind of drug than for a certain kind of literary quality.

I think living in our culture right now, there's a universal experience where we feel like we become what we do. Sometimes that's rewarding and sometimes that creates an existential crisis.