And I wanted to do a movie [Moonrise Kingdom] about a childhood romance - a very powerful experience of childhood romance. About what it's like to just be blindsided, when you're in fifth grade or sixth grade, by these kinds of feelings. Along the way, I sort of mixed in some interest in "young adult fantasy" writing.

I just now put [Robert Altman] down feeling heartbroken but happily and deeply inspired. . . . Wonderful.

I want to try not to repeat myself. But then I seem to do it continuously in my films. It's not something I make any effort to do. I just want to make films that are personal, but interesting to an audience. I feel I get criticized for style over substance, and for details that get in the way of the characters. But every decision I make is how to bring those characters forward.

With each movie I have a different set of inspirations.

The kids are the ones that have a clarity about what they want. They don't have any wisdom, but they do have a clear understanding about what they want to have happen.

I've always loved stop motion animation and I particularly wanted to do stop motion with puppets that have fur, for whatever reason that is.

Animating is a very slow, pain-staking process and the animators become the actors at that point.