I got a degree in math, from not a good school in Texas, and then I went to work as a software engineer. Just not glamorous at all.

I think I'll always want to write and direct. I'm interested in producing and helping other people tell stories. But I'm still in love with writing and directing.

When I started writing short stories, I thought I was writing a novel. I had like 60 or 70 pages. And what I realized was that I don't write inner monologue. I don't want to talk about what somebody is thinking or feeling. I wanted to try to show it in an interesting way. And so what I realized was that I was really writing a screenplay.

I don't read books on how to write screenplays just because I'm stubborn. So it's all sort of made up.

As a viewer, that's work I respond to - work that I know is singular in some way. If I'm being challenged by something on screen, if I don't quite know why it's happening, I want to know I can do the work of pulling it apart and that there'll be something satisfactory about it. If the architecture is sound, you can be lyrical in execution.

When something is beautiful in math, everything is just perfectly lined up, and you see through sheer thought that something really beautiful can take place.

I love to work. It's the idea of having someone else tell you how to make your film or how to sell it - that's the part I can't really deal with. I would rather do 1,000 things that are work than deal with one thing that's a political problem.