I hope that Requiem is better than Pi. I hope that Pi is better than my student films, and I'm hoping that I'm getting better as I get older.

Comic books and graphic novels are a great medium. It's incredibly underused.

Turning 30 was when my parents both got cancer and were fighting it and beat it, but their mortality started to get to me. Everything wasn't as hunky-dory like it was.

As filmmakers, we can show where a person's mind goes, as opposed to theater, which is more to sit back and watch it.

I had some big ups and downs when I was in my 20s and the one thing I learned was, no matter how low it gets, something good will come along - something always comes out of that dark period.

I think it's important as a filmmaker, as any person working in the arts, that you've got to try new stuff and challenge yourself and take chances.

I couldn't sleep one night and I was sitting in my office and I realized that I was an independent filmmaker.

I'm Godless. I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking

Every film had its own grammar. And it's your job as a director to basically figure out a language to tell a story.

At the end of Requiem all I wanted to do was get a DV camera and just do a small film. But then the hunger comes back.

Also expressionistic filmmaking - making the audience feel like they were inside the characters' heads. And so we create all these different types of techniques to put the audience there.

Children are happy because they don't have a file in their minds called "All the Things That Could Go Wrong.

I have to keep facing the darkness. If I stand tall and face the thing I fear, I have a chance to conquer it. If I just keep dodging and hiding it will conquer me.

… there’s a difference between having no one because you’ve chosen it and having no one because everyone has been taken away.

Innovation grows out of membership and a sure sense of responsibility people feel for their work and the organizations that employ them.

It's not an easy choice, but that's OK. Easy doesn't equal good. Difficulty doesn't equal bad. It's just life, is all.

I was born in Shawnee, Oklahoma.

I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.

It can be so difficult to get people to think about systemic institutional problems. It is easier just to see the actions of one or two people and say, "That's wrong!"

In any given moment we are either practicing mindfulness, or defacto, we are practicing mindlessness.

The only virtue I want to claim is truth and nonviolence.