Director

There's a lot of journalism about poverty, but sometimes it just helps to see that there's a real person who becomes a real mom, who is working with unsustainable wages that could eventually destroy her.

People need meeting places. You need places where ideas get exchanged and you see each other's faces once in a while.

We're always on the search for a novel or a source or an existing screenplay, or writing something ourselves that turns us on. But because films cost a lot of money to make and a huge amount of effort to get the people to rally, you have to really like it; you can't just semi-like it. Getting to 'really like' is the part that takes the minute.

Film is a team thing. There is no auteur.

A big part of the equation for 'Winter's Bone' was making it for so little that we owe nobody. We had a guaranteed loan and were able to pay it back.

There are documentaries that will just save your life and be the conduit to the art form you started out loving.

It's been a pleasure to see female comedians be prominent and flourish - like Kate McKinnon's Rudy Giuliani impressions, which are uncanny in their precision.

Social realism takes research.

I'm looking for a living wage and to continue my work. The frustration comes from when I can't do the things that matter most to me. It's when someone comes and says, 'I will finance your movie if you cast so and so.'

I need and want to see capable women. I don't like to see them weep all the time.

The Oscars have always been an arena in which very commercial films are recognised, and I don't mean that in a bitter way; I just didn't ever look in that direction.

I come from what they call the land of nowhere. I'm from the suburb. It's extremely atomizing.

There is a porous membrane between a documentary that doesn't use interviews and what you would call a neorealist hybrid film.

I would fail if I had to work with stars. And I also can't afford to work that way. I can't afford to have special circumstances for rarified individuals. So, I work with actors who have given me a sign that they're willing to work in these more humble circumstances, in real-life locations.

I'm from the East Coast, and so therefore, the Pacific Northwest forest is very exotic land to me.

When I'm interested in an aspect of someone's life, I want to ask about their experiences, their survival strategies, and what they do to keep their lives interesting.

It's risky to show poor Americans. People see it as a downer. But I really wanted to make a tightly wound piece of storytelling that also happened to explode the myth of American affluence.

When men's lives become extremely hard, women learn how to deal with them and assist them but also develop quiet systems of coping and managing.

Our necks are getting injured from looking down, and the movie screen gives you opportunity to look up, you know? It gives you an opportunity to possibly have a discussion with someone afterwards.

I will always face the conundrum that the subjects I'm attracted to aren't essentially commercial.