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.

This pain, this dying, this is just normal. This is how life is. In fact, I realize, there never was an earthquake. Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy for dreaming of something else.

A more normal, mature way to think about it [my work] would be, Oh, I work on multiple projects at once and they overlap, but the actual psychology of it is a lot more self-abusing.

We were always getting away with something, which implied that someone was always watching us, which meant that we were not alone in this world.

I definitely wanted much more normalness than what was around me.

I eat an egg every morning, and when I'm done, I almost always have the thought: There. Now even if I'm captured and starved, I'll be able to live off the protein of that egg for a while.

Most great filmmakers are good at place. Like how people say, like, "The city itself is a character in the movie," you know? I'm so interior. I always forget there's such a thing as an exterior wide shot, where you can see where someone is. As opposed to just: how can we show what this person is thinking, in an abstract way that is felt?