Books and theater were the way I understood the world and also the way I organized my sense of morality, of how to live a good life.
Everybody is always in the middle of their own opera.
I loved the idea of dramatic art of storytelling as a way to make sense of things. It's really what I love and what I care about.
When you're writing a screenplay, it's like you're dreaming the film for yourself again and again and again until it becomes almost like a memory before you make it.
I feel like movies are presents, and credits and fonts are bows and wrapping paper. I like everything to feel like it was given a lot of time. I hate it when I watch movies, and it seems like they just went and picked a font and, like, called it a day.
You only get one life, so you might as well feel all the feelings.
I'm interested in characters that have just a touch of madness.
There's nothing more thrilling than watching great actors say things that you wrote and bring them to life.
I've never had a plan, I've always done things from instinct.
Courage doesn't grow overnight. It can be a long process.
Making movies is a hard thing, and it's slow. So you can glorify the product, but the process is difficult no matter who you are.
I thought movies were handed down by God. I knew that theater was made by people because I saw the people in front of me, but movies seemed like they were delivered, wholly made, from Zeus's head or something.
I think structure is so deep in us. We put it in stories we tell our friends or in emails we write. We want it. It's how we create meaning.
I don't really decide what the core of the story is before I write. I write to figure out what the story is. And I think the characters end up talking to you and telling you what they want to be doing and what is important to them. So in some ways, your job is to listen as much as it is to write.
The more particular you make something, the more universal it becomes.
I'm scared of the Internet. That's not real, but it is. I'm worried about what it's doing to us.
I was serious about ballet for a long time, but my mom got me into tap and jazz and modern and hip-hop, and I was one of those over-lessoned children.
I lived for two years with six girls in an apartment that was built for three people, and it had no heat. We would sleep in our coats and in sleeping bags. And it was great.
I feel like I'm an actor that likes to have lots of points of connection.
I loved 'Moonlight.' I thought it was really beautiful. Really great.
