Julio Torres

“I came to Madonna when she was doing the 'Music' album, but I also really love 'Ray of Light,' and I remember really liking 'Hung Up,' when she went redhead for a second.”

“My worst fear is to become successful in a formula.”

“I've been described as a scented candle.”

“What's funny is sometimes I'll watch a movie that's so gorgeously simple, it's like two characters in a house and I think, 'Oh my god, that is the kind of thing I will do.' And then it always ends up being a circus.”

“In my comedy, I put things through a lens that is very specific to me.”

“Something that I loved about her production design in 'Zola' Is that there's plastic bags in every room. There's just so many plastic bags everywhere. And I was like, 'Oh, yeah, that's what it's like to live there.'”

“I do love the work that I make and I am also sure that it's not for everyone, but I'm not thinking about that when I'm doing it.”

“When we decide which outfit is 'too much' and which one is appropriate, or whether a dress of certain proportions is serious or unserious, we're projecting those qualities on to it, right?”

“We don't do the roses for Mother's Day thing. We co-create things, and that is how we show love and affection.”

“I'm just so interested in people who are obsessed with one thing.”

“I'm always surprised when I'm called niche, because I'm only communicating in the way that I know how to communicate.”

“I think that identity means different things to different people.”

“My mom is an architect by trade, but I think she's mostly a creative spirit. She's always making something, whether it's furniture or clothes or even even just moving furniture around the house. It's nothing fancy, it's just a sense of play and a sense of wanting to do something. I feel like that's the kind of creator that I am.”

“I mean, I don't have a TV, which is funny because I work in TV and that's where all my money comes from. Maybe I should get one?”

“I think that for the longest time, film was scared of depicting too much life on our phones because of how uncinematic it is. You would see movies and TV shows where people are meeting up for a coffee to discuss something when in real life that would've just been a text.”

“I have an appreciation for more conventional work, but that's just not my path.”

“My goal is always to create work that I'm excited about. It's never being affiliated with a thing that already exists. Which is why I was never a sports person. I'm not into succeeding in the game that somebody else came up with.”

“I think of the size of the movies that got made in like the '90s, etc. At some point everything got so bought up. So I'm curious what would a scrappy indie TV show look like?”

“I don't own a tux. I don't own a suit. I don't own a tie. I don't believe in dress codes. If there's a restaurant that says it has a dress code, I intentionally violate it.”

“First of all, a lot of 'male' clothing is so lame and bad. At stores, I usually go straight for the women's. Even as a cis man, I'm like, wait, this is a women's jacket? Just because the buttons are on the other side? Okay. I'm not even that fem, and I feel like this is completely within my limit.”