Quotes from Sam Esmail

I had a funny last name, and I didn't look like everybody else, and I got faced with a lot of racism.

It's weird; my fascination with tech was kind of combined with the fact that my parents would never pay for anything. It got me more involved because I would have to find clever ways to get things for free.

I absolutely don't deny that I was inspired by 'Fight Club,' among many other television shows and films. I completely not only acknowledge it, I own it and love to nod to them as much as possible.

It's not necessarily bad that you have angst or you have anger - it's what you do with it, how you interpret it into something profoundly moving.

I love when a protagonist and antagonist can find common ground.

I'm very protective of my online life, and I try and take as many security measures.

For shows that are hyper-serialized, it just seems to make more sense to follow a feature film model than follow a television model, which was set up more for a procedural type of show.

I went to film school to direct.

There are some critics that will just write provocative stuff to get attention, but I would say most of the time that's not the case.

When you don't have a main character that's flawed, I don't know how you relate to that person.

I'm not saying I'm a control freak, though I'll admit that I am at times.

The one thing that I know from the personal experiences that I've had with hackers and from people in tech who are brilliant at this thing, is there's a lot of angst.

You don't even know if the person you're communicating with online is actually that person. And your persona on your social media - your Facebook or Twitter - may not be the person you are in real life. So then, who is the real person? Is it somewhere in between?

In a weird way, I never wanted - I don't consider myself a very good writer. I consider myself okay; I don't consider myself great. There's Woody Allen and Aaron Sorkin. There's Quentin Tarantino. I'm not ever gonna be on that level. But I do consider myself a good filmmaker.

Sound design is always critical, especially when you're doing a thriller with a lot of suspense and tension.

I have a brilliant sound design team who's been working with me since 'Mr. Robot,' and one of the things we always think about - and it's also something we think about with cinematography - is how we get inside the characters' heads and how do we place the audience where we want them to be or how we want them to feel at any given moment.

I don't cover my scenes. We approach it visually. Sometimes we go out of our way to do awkward blocking so that we can tell whatever the emotional heartbeat is of that scene in the most interesting way possible.

I think people are more than their heritage or their skin colour or their name or how they grew up.

Girls rejected me a lot.

Before we started shooting 'Homecoming,' we were in the writer's room for 'Mr. Robot.' I was also editing Season 3 of 'Mr. Robot' while I was prepping for the 'Homecoming' shoot. So yeah, it's a lot of hats.

I'm a huge fan of 'The Watch,' and I've also been on a few times. It's Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan's show on The Ringer. It's just a great podcast about television.

I love reading about other people's world view.

I use voiceover just like I use dialogue. There's a way to give out information or give out insight to the character or give out their worldview, and maybe you have to slip in exposition, but it's all about how you write it.

I don't care if you're a Democrat or a Republican or a conservative, the election of Trump is a national tragedy for multiple reasons. It will go down as one of the worst tragedies in American history. But he's not a dictator. This happened because we either allowed it or voted for it.