My stated goal as a filmmaker is to feel something. Is to have a palpable emotion in my life, carry it through the gauntlet of the filmmaking process and try and have it land for an audience at some point during the viewing experience. That to me is successful filmmaking.

The films that have influenced me most are: 'The Hustler', 'Badlands', 'Hud', 'Tender Mercies', 'Cool Hand Luke', 'A Perfect World', and 'Laurence of Arabia'. I also really like 'Fletch'. I feel like all of these films reached an honest place in regard to the human condition while also stringing together really entertaining stories.

There's one right place to put the camera. I'm a big believer in that. You'd think you could put it anywhere. Nope.

In terms of my personal spirituality and everything else, it's ever-evolving. I have a desire to want more out of the universe. But the older I get, the further I get from any specifics about that.

I think I could probably make $5 to $10m movies for a very long time and live a perfectly good life doing it. I'd probably get paid as well as a surgeon, which is pretty damn remarkable for a guy who went to film school.

Your whole life is changed with that first child. Your social behaviors are all turned upside down, you're sleep deprived, but eight months in, my son had this seizure, and it just woke me up to the idea that, oh, no, this can end. And it can end in a way that will destroy you forever.

I thought 'Mud' would be such an easy film for people to understand.

I think the way you make a movie dictates the movie that you make.

I haven't seen 'Room' yet. People tell me 'Room' is such an amazing film, but ever since I had a kid, I just can't. I can't do it. It's not fun. It's not a place I want to be.

There's always somebody you can call and go have lunch with and just talk out an idea. And it's great, because I need that. It's part of my writing process, to early on sit people down and say, 'Alright, this film I'm working on...' and I tell them everything I have.

'Shotgun Stories' and 'Take Shelter'... I was willing to make those with no money and no time. With 'Mud,' I just wanted to protect it until I could have the resources. It's a real tricky movie.

I'm a director because I directed a movie. And if I have any advice for people, it's, 'Go write something; go direct it. If that's what you have a desire to do, go do it. If the movie stinks, just put it on the shelf and try to do it again.'

The more we try to control our kids and create who they are and where they're going, the more that will fall apart. That's a dangerous thing. So you need to actually manage the fear and figure out who your kids are. Who do they want to be and how can you help shape that, but not control it.

We have a problem with dealing with race in our country. We have a problem with dealing with marriage equality and equality in general. These are complex, divisive issues in our society, and I think that the only way we further this conversation is to take them down to a very human scale.

Actors are real. It's a real skill, and it exists, and talent really exists.

Your reaction when you lose control in a situation is to try and hang on tighter.

I outline and outline and outline, and then I'm very specific about the stuff I write. That's my process.

I've been really lucky when it comes to casting kids, and I don't particularly like child actors. Too often, they just show up, and they've had whatever real innocence that's in a child just beaten out of them. They start to perform for you, and you can just see it coming. It's no good.

There's a rhythm and a cadence in a scene, and when an actor understands without any real direction from you, then that's a very valuable gift. And some people get it, and some people don't.

I care about narrative structure; I care about how stories unfold.

'Mud' was a depository for a little more nostalgia and just a different kind of feeling, a different kind of mood. Something that's not so dark. Something that does actually have a happy ending and is a little more hopeful.

Whenever I write, I try and approach my stories from some kind of universal theme or idea or emotion.

A lot of people have a belief system that is strictly based on religious dogma.

People ask me about past projects I've worked on, and other things; I'm just really bad at lying. I have a bad poker face, so I just try to tell people how I'm feeling in the moment and really what I was trying to do.

The real cost is always more than just the money you shell out.

It took me a year just to edit 'Shotgun Stories.' Actually, it took me two years to edit 'Shotgun Stories.'

I grew up in Arkansas, and I went to Little Rock Central High, which was the site of a desegregation crisis in '57. I graduated in '97.

I think we're so advanced when it comes to watching narrative material. I mean, it's all we do is consume content all day long. So when a character walks onscreen, you immediately start making connections for that character: Is that a good guy? Is that a bad guy?

Steven Spielberg had a tremendous influence on me through his early stuff. 'E.T.', 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' - 'Jaws,' I think, is one of the most beautifully directed films ever.

I was always interested in creative writing growing up. From junior high on, I was writing short stories. I also grew up watching movies. My father would take me to everything. Most weeks, I could open the paper having seen every movie listed.

It's amazing how far you can get into a plot before you figure out what you're doing.

'Indiana Jones' was me growing up. I could quote lines from 'Tango and Cash' as much as I could quote lines from 'The Searchers'.

My first job in the film business was working as a production assistant, and then a production manager on a documentary about Townes Van Zandt.

I first read 'Tom Sawyer' when I was in 8th grade, 13 years old. I realised since that Mark Twain just bottled what it felt like to be a child.

If I can drive down the road in my car and listen to XM satellite, and when a song gets beamed into my car, it can tell me who wrote the song and what the damn lyrics are, why, when you broadcast a digital signal of a film, can't it speak to your television to set up a list of settings to show the film in the way that it was meant to be shown?

Making movies is really hard. It's a very complex process, with many, many variables.

Definitely when you give a script to an actor, it's like dropping a capsule in water and the fizzing starts. That's when the thing starts to live and breathe.

I wrote 'Mud' for Matthew McConaughey and had never met him.

I've only seen one snake out in the wilderness, not behind glass, and I froze. I literally couldn't move. So to say I have a fear of snakes would be true.

With 'Midnight Special,' the sound was used as a narrative construct. The audience is looking in one direction when a sound suddenly erupts from the other direction.

I think plot is very overrated. Plot is obviously necessary, but what I really care about is emotionally affecting the audience. Having a thought myself and then an emotional experience myself, somehow transferring that to the audience.

I think too often in films, people think endings are a summation of plot, and I don't like that. Because once you know where you're going as an audience member, then it's like a video game. You're just waiting for them to get through the levels and beat the bad guy. And I just think that's boring.

Financing for 'Shotgun Stories' was initiated with money from close friends and family. This is where the money to go into production came from. After production, a company called 'Upload Films' came on board and provided post-production funds and services. In both instances, people were taking a gamble on us.

Nature is the purest thing we can touch and observe. It can be the most beautiful and also the most devastating.

We have so many films that we can fit into the slate a year, and we spend $100 million on those films in order to make $400 million dollars. We don't spend $20 million in hopes of eking out $40 million.

I think only the movies you do remember are the films you had an emotional connection to.

I can talk to execs very clearly, very plainly. I don't get nervous in front of them anymore.

I never wanted to make movies just for me. I want to make movies that people watch.

I'll say this: I think from a directing standpoint, 'Loving' is my most accomplished film. Strictly from a technical, directing point of view.

I think when you're talking about marriage equality and race, people very quickly start to get into their political corners: their ideology comes to the forefront, and they get into this platform argument that they're used to making, which really doesn't have anything to do with the day-to-day basics of what is being talked about.