Sean Durkin quotes:

I wasn't good enough to be a professional soccer player obviously but that was my first goal in life.

Well, first of all, making films is a collaborative process. You need people. You need people you trust and love and who are your friends. People you can work with.

Sports teams, people who follow sports teams, religion, churches, work - any company, I find that people just generally have a need to belong to something larger than themselves.

I was really into writing short fiction and also photography when I was a kid.

The trappings of a religious cult tend to fall into candlelit ceremonies and robes and group chanting and singing and prayer.

I remember being at school during morning meeting and looking around at everybody, 350 kids, saying a prayer. We're all very young and no one knows what it means, and I remember feeling strange that people were just repeating words that they didn't understand. I refused to participate. For some reason I always rejected it, but respectfully.

I love the first hour of a horror movie, the fear and anticipation. Then, when it gets bloody, I lose interest.

When I was a little kid, I loved horror films. I always liked being scared.

When people leave cults, they don't know that they left a cult.

When someone stays with you and they're not your guest, even when they are your guest they get on your nerves. When people visit for long periods of time, that just happens.

Filmmaking is a real craft.

What I learned from directing, I learned from soccer, where it's like a coach-player relationship.

It's sort of one ongoing process where writing ends and directing starts.

You know, when you're isolated on set for like a month, people like to get rowdy.

I won't rewrite on set, but I'll just trim the fat.

When you write, no matter what, it ends up personal.

I would like to do a sports movie.

When I was a kid, I was afraid of large group of conforming people.

I'm a believer in film school.

The way brainwashing works is subtle and takes a long time.

A big fear of working with an actor that's never been a lead in a film before is that you're going to have to work really hard to pull a performance out of her.

I always try to keep the confidence of the actors, and try my best to make them feel comfortable or confident.

I went to my first college to play soccer.

I'm interested in adapting books and all sorts of things.

In editing, it's amazing how you choose the in and out points. What you cut on is everything for creating tension. It's amazing how expanding a shot by five seconds can just ruin the tension.

When I hire actors I believe in their abilities.

You can't write something to please someone.