I never saw myself as a director. It's certainly a second language but making movies for 40 years, you pick stuff up. However, this style of making movies, this documentary style, is easier for me because I gather a lot of material and with an editor, write it on screen. You try to write based on what you shot.

When you perform with a live audience, the audience comes back to you, so that you and the audience are giving to each other, in a sense. It's an extraordinary thing. It's wild turf up there.

You don't get to know anybody in a movie until after it's over. You work less together in a film than you do onstage.

I found out how temperamental I am, yes. And that sometimes that can be kind of off-putting.

The camera can film my face but until it captures my soul, you don't have a movie.

Romantic love can be a lot of crap, though, let me tell you. And it can hurt you.

Failure's relative. I've always felt, even early on, if I lose the freedom to fail, something's not right about that. It's how you treat failure, too. There's something to learn from it. I've had movies that have failed colossally, so you kind of analyze your failures: What kind of failure was it? A failure because it's misunderstood by others? A failure because you misunderstood it yourself?