I think it's more interesting if you go all the way with the world you have, and really look at it, and push it to an even more extreme extreme.

Narrative and characters have always interested me. I never tried to alienate an audience. Of course, gradually, I wanted a bigger and bigger space to draw people in, so it's very organic [growth].

It would require constant vigilance to not replace each person with my own fictional version of them.

There was nothing in this world that was not a con, suddenly I understood this. Nothing really mattered, and nothing could be lost.

It was a real whale, a photograph of a real whale. I looked into its tiny wise eye and wondered where that eye was now. Was it alive and swimming, or had it died long ago, or was it dying now, right this second? When a whale dies, it falls down through the ocean slowly, over the course of a day. All the other fish see it fall, like a giant statue, like a building, but slowly, slowly.

The level of control, that's part of what's so appealing about filmmaking - you have so much control over what the reader, the viewer, is noticing from moment to moment. They can't do that boring boring boring thing as easily.

It was an act of devotion. A little like writing or loving someone — it doesn’t always feel worthwhile, but not giving up somehow creates unexpected meaning over time.