“By the end of high school, I had this fork-in-the-road moment where pa...” — Damien Chazelle Quote

By the end of high school, I had this fork-in-the-road moment where part of me considered going to vocational music school to really pursue it.

Certainly, I've loved musicals for a while, so I did some short films in college that had musical numbers and things like that, so I've kind of been obsessed with Fred and Ginger and Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen and Jaques Demy forever.

I hadn't seen that many movies that really go deep enough into the fears of playing music or the language that musicians can use to treat each other or, like, the way that you can see it dehumanize and the way that it can feel like boot camp.

It's certainly no coincidence that big bands became the entertainment of the army in WWI and WWII, and that jazz drumming style is very military influenced. The snare drum comes from the military and becomes the core kind of sound of jazz drums.

I moved to New York to pursue music.

If my children want to pursue their dreams, I will always support them.

I don't want to sacrifice my life, as I feel that I'm still very selfish and still want to pursue my dreams.

When I was younger, I felt I had to be a rebel to pursue what I wanted to.

I didn't pursue happiness at all. I've never pursued it. I wasn't brought up to pursue it.