I'm Godless. And so I've had to make my God, and my God is narrative filmmaking, which is -- ultimately what my God becomes, which is what my mantra becomes, is the theme.

I think religion is often very different from spirituality. Religion is often about rules and people trying to control our lives who are actually very unspiritual... God can be found anywhere, and in fact, everywhere. And you don

In seventh grade I had a magical teacher, her name was Mrs. Fried. She wore only pink, she drove a pink Mustang, and she was half out of her head. But very inspiring. And one day she said, "Take out a paper and pen and write something about peace." For some reason I wrote a poem on Noah - I don't know why I chose Noah - and it turned out it was for a contest for the UN. I ended up winning and reading the poem in front of the UN. I remember Mrs. Fried telling me, "When you write your first book, dedicate it to me." That was like, "Whoa."

Also expressionistic filmmaking - making the audience feel like they were inside the characters' heads. And so we create all these different types of techniques to put the audience there.

I hope that Requiem is better than Pi. I hope that Pi is better than my student films, and I'm hoping that I'm getting better as I get older.

I think it's important as a filmmaker, as any person working in the arts, that you've got to try new stuff and challenge yourself and take chances.

I think people are people and, if their feelings are truthful, they can connect. It doesn't matter if you're an aging, 50-something wrestler at the end of his career, or an ambitious, 20-something ballet dancer.