I think everybody's contemplating TV now, because mid-level and high-budget independent films are not being made now.

People think you have to be tortured or miserable to write, but I'm finding that I get inspired a lot more these days before I'm happy.

I generally have lyrics first, but you can't help that when you're writing lyrics you start to get a melody in your head. So they come kind of simultaneously.

Acting is playing - it's actually going out on a playground with the other kids and being in the game, and I need that. Writing satisfies that part of myself that longs to sit in my room and dream.

The great movies that I want to do now are being made for $2.5-million budgets.

Directing is a big responsibility to take on. I think I'm only good at doing things I know very well. I don't direct movies because I get offered the new vampire movie or science fiction movie. I don't get offered those, anyway, but if I did, I would just tell 'em, "Look, I'm the wrong guy." I only do things about people and situations, and I do the ones that I think I'm the best guy for the job on, which is usually something I generate myself.

If you look at a character as a mountain over there that you have to climb, then I think you've lost 50 percent of the air.