Mike Mills

“As someone who grew up in a house where there wasn't a lot of talking, I'm used to just looking at the world. And in general I often feel like I just don't understand what's happening. That everybody else does, but I don't quite get it.”

“My dad's gay experiences really had a very positive influence on me and my straight relationships - how to better accept all the weirdness and ambiguity and ups and downs and paradoxes. I knew from the beginning I was writing about love.”

“Sadness is a super important thing not to be ashamed about but to include in our lives. One of the bigger problems with sadness or depression is there's so much shame around it. If you have it you're a failure. You are felt as being very unattractive.”

“Humans are vulnerable, messy little animals and that's normal. And all I want to do is make a space for that in my films.”

“I think I make films to help bolster and feed the part of me that wants to remain in a positive relationship with the world and to engage in it. So hopefully in non-sentimental ways, I'm trying to make something that helps make me happy.”

“There's some movies I watch, they're kind of like my anti-anxiety pill, my anti-depressant pill. I watch them at least once or twice a month probably. And I never stop learning from them as a filmmaker.”

“If you ask me, the place that a story happens is as equal character. It's almost like an ecological viewpoint: These people are living in this piece of land, and in this piece of land in this time this is possible. For me, I almost think location first. It's time first - what year is it - then where are we, and then who is in it.”

“It's funny now how much we look at - whatever you want to call it: art, design, culture stuff, film - online, and how in the online world, you're instantly global.”

“I've always known that I love directing but I was really aware of it while making 'Beginners.' I am my happiest when I'm on set directing. I am also my kindest. When the actors get in front of the camera, it makes them very vulnerable. I am so in love with them for trying so hard.”

“When a film works, the director had a lot to do with that, but the director also didn't have a lot to do with that. There are so many moving parts. It's really about being open to how the river is flowing and trying to get on the river.”

“I am definitely writing letters to lots of directors in my mind when I'm making a film. I'm chasing Woody Allen and Godard and Milos Forman and all these people.”

“Everyone talks to their dog, and then in your mind the dog talks back. A talking dog can provide the words that a stunted protagonist finds difficult to muster.”

“There's some things that you learn as you're shooting, and as you're editing that are key, because when you start you don't have the brain that can finish it. You don't really know what it is, and that's the key job; figuring out what you actually have, not what you're dreaming of having.”

“I don't really believe that documentary is objective reality and fiction is all illusion.”

“My experience, with both my parents, is that grief has a lot of down, sad things, but I was also really emotionally raw, in the first year after each of them passed. Flowers smelled more intensely, my relationships were hotter, and I was more willing to risk. I was going for it a lot more. I was 'unsober' and I wasn't playing by my rules.”

“To be honest, we have no control over what's going on with a movie, much less what people are going to think of it. Your whole life is wound up in it but you don't have control and you have to get used to being on that turbulent plane without trying to fly it. The less you think about all that the better.”

“One good and bad thing about New York is there's so much exciting stuff and so many people doing something interesting. I actually find in New York that you become more careerist and more focused on what's the newest, hippest thing.”

“I am intrigued by inanimate objects. They're a piece of history, someone's statement and ideas of life.”

“I love being a writer-director. I couldn't imagine directing without writing it. You have to write and tell your stories - that's what directing is to me.”

“People ask 'How does doing a film compare to doing an ad?' Well, when you're doing a commercial you don't have to sell tickets. You have a captured audience. Which is actually completely rare and great; it gives you a lot of freedom. When you make a film, you have to do advertisements for the film.”