All stereotypes turn out to be true. This is a horrifying thing about life. All those things you fought against as a youth: you begin to realize they're stereotypes because they're true.

You start selling the movie before you make it.

It's impossible to make a movie out of 'Naked Lunch.' A literal translation just wouldn't work. It would cost $400 million to make and would be banned in every country of the world.

The problem with doing a schlocky or big budget studio film is that it wouldn't actually be fun for me. It wouldn't be exciting.

Casting is really a black art. It's a huge part of directing and it's the most invisible. It's one that people don't really think about or talk about. But you can really destroy your movie by casting it badly before you've shot a foot of film. And yet there are no guidebooks for it, there's no rule book to tell you how to do it. It's all your own experience and your own sensibility and your own intuition.

I'm not very well organized unless I'm plugged into a structure like the opera or a movie. When I'm doing that, I have to be organized.

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.