“Do you remember when you were 10 or 11 years old and you really thought your folks were the best? They were completely omniscient and you took their word for everything. And then you got older and you went through this hideous age when suddenly they were the devil, they were bullies, and they didn't know anything.”

“If anything I try to write something that would be more difficult to film. I tend to see film as competition and would like instead to do what books do best.”

“You hear the best stories from ordinary people. That sense of immediacy is more real to me than a lot of writerly, literary-type crafted stories. I want that immediacy when I read a novel.”

“Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education.”

“If you start in the pit of despair with these profane, awful things, even a glimmer of hope or awareness is going to occur that's much brighter coming from this dark, awful beginning.”

“I wanted to write about the moment when your addictions no longer hide the truth from you. When your whole life breaks down. That's the moment when you have to somehow choose what your life is going to be about.”

“Minimalism seems closest to the sophisticated storytelling of movies. Movies have really educated contemporary audiences to be the most intelligent, sophisticated audiences in history. We don't any longer need to have the relationship between one scene and the next explained. We will figure it out ourselves.”

“Maybe humans are just the pet alligators that God flushed down the toilet.”

“I used to work in a funeral home to feel good about myself, just the fact that I was breathing.”