To me, I definitely stand in the corner of wanting to give voice to the bullied, and not the bully.

My impulse is to create an aesthetic that's about a humanistic approach to a world and trying to create compassion for all the characters.

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 feel like so much of my life is about a conversation I'm having with myself. I do interact with other people, but often I'm more interested in what I'm learning in the relationship I have with myself.

I guess I'm trying to write stuff that I, as a viewer, would connect to.

I grew up in a religious family, and we weren't allowed to listen to rock music.

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.