I grew up feeling like a weirdo like many kids do. But I was lucky to find my own home for peculiar children. I went to a school for the gifted in Florida, and it was full of kids who - we were all strange together. And that was a real blessing.

We cling to our fairy tales until the price for believing in them becomes too high.

If you must fail ... fail spectacularly!

I liked this idea: that peculiarness wasn't a deficiency, but an abundance; that it wasn't we who lacked something normals had, but they who lacked peculiarness. That we were more, not less.

Fifty-percent of the director's job honestly is casting the movie well.

Laughing doesn't make bad things worse any more than crying makes them better. It doesn't mean you don't care, or that you've forgotten. It just means you're human.

Some of my favorite photos from the old days are of people who maybe didn't know how to smile. Maybe smiling in photos wasn't an accepted form of behavior back then. But the big eyes and the oversized dolls that people are carrying, and it's something about their hair - the anachronisms of these photos are really what creep me out.