I do truly believe that the smallest stories can wind up being the biggest because it's through the specific that a writer can best access the universal.

It's interesting when you wind up distilling all your ambitions and your goals and dreams into one single person. It's giving that person a lot of power.

I like movies that are specific. Movies that home in on a very specific subculture, a specific discipline, a specific world.

I was a writer for hire. I wrote to pay the bills.

I remember being inspired myself when smaller films, whether it's 'Beasts' or 'Winter's Bone,' wound up in the Oscars lineup.

If you want to make a movie, there may be many forces trying to pull you down, but really, a lot of it is will power. You can will it into being if you just believe that you are going to make a movie.