I'd love to be a director-for-hire and get a nice paycheck and captain one of those big ships, but I think studios mistakenly think I want to write what I direct - which I don't. I write out of desperation, because I never get a script I like, other than "Nebraska." It's a matter of: What's the screenplay? Is it intelligent? Is it human? I don't care what genre, what scale. I'm here for the movies.

I think if you watch most of my films with the sound off, you could still tell what's going on.

Hollywood films have become a cesspool of formula and it's up to us to try to change it... I feel like a preacher! But it's really true. I feel personally responsible for the future of American cinema. Me personally.

Were "A Clockwork Orange" or "Blue Velvet" released today, would they have the same power to shock that they had when they came out? Are we too inured by that torrent of images and the ridiculousness of modern political life, so that nothing shocks us anymore? What does it take to shock someone today - or at least jolt them? I don't have an answer. I'm just asking the question.

If you're not making epic, archetypal films on some level, I think you're wasting a great potential of cinema.

I like voice-over in films, and most of my films have been voice-over films.

If you were falling in love and you could go back in time and relive a day and see the banal things you did that you'd forgotten about, you'd weep, looking at that day.