I had no shortage of wild times in my youth.

I ultimately am probably a pretty anxious person.

Best advice: 'Just be yourself.' Worst advice: 'Just be yourself.'

I think being a young female star must be really, really pretty rough.

I think I was a pretty anxious dreamer, maybe a fundamentally lonely kid.

I don't want to direct a Marvel movie. I don't care about those mythologies.

I think that there's something about short films that just kind of keeps your muscles sharp.

That's the most important thing for me is just figuring out how and if I'm growing as an artist.

What might the world look like if we took some chances on the film-makers we might be afraid of?

I understand the power of sorrow, and I understand how far it can take us from ourselves if we let it.

It's important to tell meaningful stories and to find new ways to communicate those stories to people.

I grew up in the Midwest. I understand a sense of the small-town mentality, small-town social politics.

Making movies, even though it's a business, is also an art, and sometimes you don't hit the bull's-eye.

I don't get to make many features. It's not like that's something I can just snap my fingers and make happen.

For me, there's something about a certain kind of genre film that has real potency in its emotional landscape.

The genre of horror is really just a way to manage much larger, much more terrifying realities in our daily worlds.

A lot of the best suspense operates on a careful withholding of information as opposed to the doling out of information.

What makes a lot of suspenseful films work is very, very particular points of view and very subjective use of the camera.

If you look at most mainstream filmmaking, to be honest, some of these films aren't even asking questions anymore at all.

I love horror. It's funny, because 'The Invitation' never struck me as horror, but it's definitely that type of thriller.

I'm ultimately drawn to film many kinds of stories if they are sort of about unlocking the secrets of our human potential.

I think there are always going to be people who say, even if they are engaged in the movie, they just want it to move faster.

I'm strong-willed, but that doesn't mean I can't work with people if we're all in the mission of trying to make a good movie.

As bad as some movies can be, good movies are also possible, sometimes through the very heinous corporations we love to trash.

I feel like, generally, the golden eras of cinema seem to be in moments of incredible political turmoil and strife and struggle.

I've experienced a lot of successes. I've experienced a lot of failures. I've been able to get back up on my feet and keep going.

Claire Denis's 'Beau Travail' is one of Denis's greatest achievements. One of the most mysterious and beautiful endings in movies.

I think my narrative is actually pretty interesting if I step back from it and don't engage too much in it, personally or emotionally.

There's just so much lazy violence directed at women. But beyond that, lazy violence directed at humans generally. Just lazy violence.

When I reflect on the losses I've experienced, I've come to believe that those experiences were transformative, that they shaped who I am.

Genre mechanics are really tricky because if you pay too much attention to the idea of rules of genre, it becomes pretty stale, pretty fast.

One thing I don't do anymore as I've gotten older is that I don't make big blanket statements about whether or not an artist is good or bad.

When horror films are made in times of political strife, I think they're not made with an instinct to add to the chaos but to bring shape to it.

I am honored and lucky to be one of the first films funded by Gamechanger Films, a consortium of investors who finance movies directed by women.

I would love to take another stab at really smart, speculative sci-fi - my first was a bit of a stumble. I look forward to getting another chance.

What I do think is really interesting is that, as I get older and more mature, I'm really attuned to how frightening this world is that we live in.

I am a mother now, and I'm a mother to a son, and I want him to go into the world a feminist. I want him to go into the world with compassion for humanity.

I'm a director first and foremost, and I hope that the fact that I'm female is just one of the many things that informs my unique perspective on the world.

For me, I feel like I don't see myself as all that different from other humans as a woman, but I'm surprised by how frequently I'm asked to see myself differently.

I think there's a reason why some companies have such dismal records. It's not because they're clueless; it's because they systematically don't want to hire women.

Our society is constantly creating this framework for girls to feel that their only worth is their appearance, and it's damaging on so many levels to so many people.

There are times when I'm kind of anti-social, I'm just really shy, and I don't feel like I fit in, and I then attribute that to some emotional state that's crippling me.

It's hard to prep a movie in five days and shoot it in five days and cut it in barely any time. You don't get quite enough time to make the thing, let alone tell the story.

I was lucky to work with Gamechanger Films, who are a consortium of investors financing films directed by women. This is a company that puts their money where their mouth is.

There's something about the girls and the boys who just live for the moment and don't think a second beyond their needs and the here and now that, ultimately, is pretty tragic.

I was in a very lucky position to be able to consider studio films and had decided to not go that route for a very long time until I read a script that I loved called 'Aeon Flux.'

Pain in all its forms is also a message, a kind of distress signal to our hearts and minds. There are times when it's really important to tune into that message and just listen to it.

I feel a kinship to the idea of beloved stories and beloved pieces of art that we can imagine in different ways and sort of take a meta approach in terms of what those stories offer us.

What kind of world is it if we allow people who are violent and do terrible things off the hook? What does that say about the world we're living in - it's like a world upside down, right?

What fascinates me is that when we look at the history of women in politics, so frequently the women who get the farthest are the women who are quite conservative in their political views.

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