"I’ll tell ya, when you see a kid actually stop and focus because they love doing something — I mean something other than just goofing around or playing video games, right? Something next level — putting in the extra work and scraping together a few bucks to enter a race because they just want a shot at hugging a real track? THAT gets me. Watching kids like Annabeth, Josh, and Brandon… all different but all with the same grit and attitude and big dreams? THAT’S what gives me hope for this sport! And for the future! I get emotional just thinking about what they put on the line! Great. Now I gotta wipe my windshield. Thanks."

"I guess the first one would be the Mike Leigh movie, Naked. The performances in the movie are so great. David Thewlis — it’s just one of the greatest performances I’ve ever seen. And the movie — they improvised to find a script. They improvised for months and months, and then Mike Leigh writes a script based on the improv, and you can tell that it’s come from such a pure place, because it’s natural for all the actors, but it’s also just the — walking around London, and it’s just incredible. And also, my favorite actress of all time is Katrin Cartlidge, and she’s in that movie. She’s ridiculous in it, she’s so good."

"Cassavetes’ movies to me are a kind of pure energy. He’s the very opposite of Ozu because he cared nothing at all about form. Yet for some strange reason, by not caring about form at all—he just went for it—this produced, in formal aspects, the same result as when you pay a lot of attention to form. His energy with actors can also be felt. In each shot, you can feel what he wants to tell us about story, and you get the feeling that this has to be acted now, shot in the very moment. I would say it’s possibly something very American. This pure energy of making is very American, and it’s very optimistic."