The things keeping you back-these embarrassing, boring, stupid obstacles-are the heart of what it is to be human. They’re the whole reason for making and needing art. So you might as well go ahead and begin in whatever way you can right now.

I made some shorts that I'm not in. I think because I write so many short stories, it's not that hard to come up with characters that are not me. But my way into making movies has been through performing. My very first short film, I played a child and her own mother. So in some ways, to me, my great achievement so far is just that I've gotten all these other people to play the other parts. That's what makes it a real movie.

The life you live in front of an audience is like an altered state - it's not totally real. I'm always, even in the course of one day, trying to find ways to balance both sides.

Writing a novel was like I had some Play-Doh to work with and could just keep working with it - doing a million drafts and things changing radically and characters appearing and disappearing and solving mysteries: Why is this thing here? Should I just take that away? And then realizing, no, that is there, in fact, because that is the key to this. I love that sort of detective work, keeping the faith alive until all the questions have been sleuthed out.

So the recordings were these immersive landscapes, and yet, unlike the performances that almost no one would see, I had a sense that these could live forever. I was just starting to get my head around the democratic aspect of art; I didn't want to make rarefied things that were either alienatingly obscure or elite and art-worldy, so a recording that anyone could buy was a great medium.

I cried in English, I cried in french, I cried in all the languages, because tears are the same all around the world.

I think because I write so many short stories, it's not that hard to come up with characters that are not me.