The ways in which people are damaged are the ways in which they're strong. It's what makes people interesting - what they've overcome and how, and what they haven't and how that's become a good thing. Almost everyone's life is both a gorgeous story and a tragedy. I think being alive is really, really hard, and I'm constantly stunned and amazed by people who make it interesting and beautiful.

Film and TV is a very hard profession to enter into if you don't have the ability to take a long period of time without making money so you can write, direct or raise financing, or work your way up, often with unpaid internships. It's hard to get into without a lot of connections. You end up with a lot of white people from privilege making films. So we're seeing a lot of the same kinds of stories.

I think what I've learned most from being an actress is that there's no method. That you have to invent this process over and over and over again, depending on who you're working with and what you're doing.

Acting is something that I've done since I was so young. I always felt - certainly as a teenager - really cynical about acting. I definitely didn't feel like it was something I wanted to do, and so I really took it for granted.

I think that cynicism can often be mistaken for wisdom.

I want my world to get bigger and not end up in a small corner.

I've always been such a fan of short films - in fact, I never considered that I would actually make a feature. I just thought I wanted to make shorts for the rest of my life. They are a lot harder to have shown and a lot harder to find and see as an audience, but I don't know. It's just a form that I really love. I was just making them for the process, but ultimately, I did get them into festivals, and they did end up on television, and they had as much of a life as short films can.