“With this job, I get to just be creative in contemplating my uncle and contemplating my grandfather and unabashedly reach for that connection while...
“Family separation was torture, in the words of Physicians for Human Rights. And in the book Separated, I call it ‘inside an American tragedy’...
“In the church, when you perform it’s not for form or fashion. You’re a vessel. You know, to God Be the Glory. It’s not about you. When they...
“My argument as a writer would be: the better you understand somebody from the inside, the more powerful you are. You can decide to fight, you can...
“There was a convergence of things spurred on by this creative endeavor that merged with my personal life. This film cracked me open in a way that I...
“I love life. I’ve always fought to live. I am happy every day that I have an opportunity to do new work or find new work or experience something...
“Radical self-declaration is really taking the time to feel and think through who you are, what’s important to you, and really embracing the worst...
“The way people commit to Air Force One, Die Hard, Sigourney Weaver in Alien—I want them to commit to me. There is no closet in the studios filled...
“I am the people’s comedian. It took all of us to get me here. Growing up poor, they tell you things like, money doesn’t make happiness—let me see...
“I want to be taken seriously as a force to be reckoned with. What I can offer creatively feels open-ended and limitless. I care about real people...
“I do love the activity of writing, which is very different from editing. Editing is a social thing that you get right or you get wrong. It’s an...
“Something in me wants a sense of not having control. Some actors want rituals to really feel on top of things, but I’ve always loved not having that...
“Shooting a film is really enjoyable because you are present—beat by beat, shot by shot, moment by moment. I’m more present on set than almost any...
“I go into a movie with a certain set of conscious ideas and things that I want to communicate. A story I wanted to tell, a character I wanted to put...
“To invite someone into your home feels very intimate. It’s like a fast track to intimacy, in a way that nothing else really is. People’s memories...
“I think a lot of films are love/hate letters to the place you came from. Shaun of the Dead is about North London where we lived at the time, Hot...
“One of the things writing can do is get to the pain. All of us have pain; you can’t live a human life without it. Much of that pain is very deep and...
“Making your own life fodder for your own art… there’s something very fundamental about that. You have to make that leap mentally and think...