Quotes from Sam Levinson

Sobriety has a way of allowing a person to begin to realize that the things that you do have consequences for the people that love you.

I'm writing, I'm directing, I'm editing, I'm mixing, I'm showrunning. There is a certain point where it's like, the work is the work.

And the nature of split screen is a disconnect: It's a line between two characters, two images, two realities.

Everything is spectacle. Everything is entertainment, whether it's shame, invasion of privacy, abuse, no matter what it is it's become almost a sporting event. It's like the new Roman Coliseum in a way.

To put it simply, I'm not interested in making comfortable films, and I don't want to crush the audience's imagination. I want them to feel like they might have missed something.

I don't really outline. I just kind of know where I'm going in my head, so I'll write and discover it for myself. Or I'll just write an entire episode and throw it out because I land on an idea and realize that's where I should jump off from.

As a child I'm sure I was no different from any other human being struggling to navigate the difficulties and complexities of their childhood and adolescent years. I feel it's a time when all of us need an escape, a place where we can leave the world behind and just disappear. For me, it was film.

I studied method acting for four years and I'm a big believer in the idea that it's not about the actual experience itself. You don't have to go through exactly what this character has gone through.

The way that I deal with actors as a director is I just talk to them forever before we even arrive on set.