My idea of no makeup on actors is really no makeup. I mean, they can be wearing makeup. I don't care what they're wearing as long as it looks like they're not wearing makeup. But an actress will suddenly appear with some lipstick on. And that's makeup. Keener's character wears makeup. Her character would wear makeup. I try to stay true to whoever that person is. I hate that kind of thing where you're waking up in the morning with makeup on in a movie. I just think it pulls you out of the movie.

The movie is in my head and that's the movie. But I'd be crazy to not be flexible. I think because I have the movie in my head, I can be flexible. I know what's going to work and not work and I know, generally, what I can change and bend and have the movie still work.

I hear people talk in my head and I write it down. I choose where they live and how they dress to be real. That person wouldn't wear that. That person wouldn't say that. She can't afford to live like that. All that bullshit that so many movies have in them. I don't want to see that.

I always had good friends, but I did not feel like a cool girl, ever.

Marriages are so complicated that no one person is the culprit. But, I am really interested in class without really realizing that I am. It's more the manifestations of different classes that interest me.

Catherine Keener really gets me. She and I have such a shorthand together.

If anything, I learned most from being a huge fan of his and watching movies like Annie Hall and Manhattan over and over again - that influenced the kind of movies that I wanted to make more than anything else.