Mike Mills

“I feel like kids are the perfect psychic investigators of their parents, and kids understand their parents' unconscious better than the parents ever do.”

“Shooting a film is like a kismet quest. You have thirty days and you need magic to happen. So that's why I wear suits. I'm praying to the gods, and I'm doing everything I can to respect the powers of the world.”

“Grief and memory go together. After someone dies, that's what you're left with. And the memories are so slippery yet so rich.”

“I think that talking about the personal specificity, personal details, is how you get the big, big audiences - by talking about your relationships or your personal tragedies. If you reach out with that energy, you'll touch people.”

“I think that animals aren't less intelligent than humans, they're just of a different intelligence. We have five million smell-sensitive cells in our nose, they have two hundred and fifty million - they can smell emotion. They can smell different types of emotion, they just have another type of intelligence.”

“Making a movie is so hard, you'd better make movies about something you really know about. And even more, it's really good to make movies about things you need to figure out for yourself, so you're driven the whole way through. It's going to make things more crucial for you.”

“I'm into people's emotional lives and relationships and the complications of living. That's my turf.”

“Actors are pretending for you, but they're not lying. They are not putting on a guise instead of themselves. They are finding things inside that they have experienced.”

“I guess I watch movies to make myself happier a lot.”

“To me, sadness and humor aren't disrelated and humor is the best tool I've had against the sadness in my life.”

“Over and over again, I'm trying to express or communicate these big and small struggles to the world, and really to myself.”