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.

I don't spend a lot of time in nature. Probably less than most people that live in urban Texas.

Editing is very satisfying process. You spend hours working on something and then you get to watch it. It's immediately satisfying where everything else is just kind of waiting and waiting and waiting.

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.

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.

It's interesting because I don't ever want to ask a better question than I can answer, if that makes sense. I find that frustrating as a viewer. Compelling questions, while not easy, are easier than compelling answers.

I am obsessed with story. I had a late awakening in life. In college was the first time that I understood what you could do with a story and what a good novel is - literary value and subtext and irony and everything.