I think Jewish history did away with a priesthood when the Temple was destroyed, and it became, supposedly, a religion of scholars. A rabbi is just a scholar.

I think a lot of these terms, nationalistic things, somebody is an American, or somebody is a Frenchman, or somebody is a Jew, I don't know, it doesn't mean anything to me. You really should start augmenting these words, saying what kind. If you want to say somebody is a Jew, what do you mean by that? Does he have blonde hair? I think a lot of these ancient nationalistic and ethnic terms have kind of lost their meaning, or their meaning is so broad, it's nothing. It's like he's connected to the ancient world. Everybody is.

Certain movies that are trying to evoke history are just like being in an antique store, and all you notice is that all the stuff has been gathered together, and it feels like a pile of antiques. How can you think that that will evoke the past? It doesn't even have to evoke anything, but anyway, it's how we're living. It's this moment where nobody has to immediately think too much about how things are being documented. It's a great time.

You know how misleading an image is. You see an image in the newspaper, if they left the caption off, good luck knowing what's going on. There is something inherently misleading about images, so they need annotation.

The basis of national identity is to say, "This is authentic to me or my forebears," and is there even such a thing? How authentic is it to your life? Just because your grandfather did it, what does that have to do with you? If I say I'm working in the style of Rembrandt, so what? You can say it, but are you really? No, because when you try to literally copy a cultural artifact, you change it. It dissolves, and then who's looking at it? People who appreciate that kind of drawing, or people it means nothing to?

A picture story just doesn't run like a film. It doesn't have 24 frames per second. It doesn't deal with this illusion of movement.

A picture story just doesn't run like a film. It doesn't have 24 frames per second. It doesn't deal with this illusion of movement. It's more like if you did an illuminated novel. I think both of those things should be running at full blast, not less of both so it becomes an easier thing. I think it should be twice as dense. That's just what interests me.