I've heard of nothing coming from nothing, but I've never heard of absolutely nothing coming from hard work.

I was pursuing the arts with theater in school, and I was doing after-school activities, but not in any real movement towards a professional career.

I used to be a huge fan of 'Lockup' on MSNBC, and that certainly has helped with my understanding of the world.

I ran track in high school very competitively, and then ran it D-1 at Boston University. I ran there on an athletic scholarship and chose BU because they had both a good track program and an arts program.

I had a pretty sexual imagination for a kid.

When I was coming up with the Hal Hartley films, I was cast as a no one. I had no name visibility. I was working at a downtown post-performance-art, avant garde theater company and doing a couple things on television. But I was a total unknown.

Character is character and voice is voice, which translates nicely from writing novels to writing TV. But the process is different. You have a writer's room, people pitch you jokes and you collaborate.

I don't consider myself an artist necessarily, but craftsmen or people in the arts, their spiritualism is sort of when you're writing well or performing well or doing whatever you do well, there's an element of that that's either God-given, a talent that you're not necessarily responsible for.