I'm not really worried about people's perception of what I do, or people's analysis of why I make the decisions I make. I wake up every day with a new interest and a desire for an education.

With Hollywood you're yesterday's news if you get a flop at the box office. So you might as well be braced to have something else to do that's interesting. Have something lined up to keep your stories fulfilled, and your ideas, because if you're just cranking out movies three times a year.

I've never wanted to be a fireman, in my life. I've never really wanted to grow up and be anything other than a film director.

It's been an obsession of various genres, disciplines, and aspects and elements of movie-making. It's always been something that I've really aspired to, so doing something new and different, reinventing myself and working with new people is just the passport to the amazing world that is the movies.

Sundance [festival] is all your Hollywood buds and buddies and rolling out and high-fiving and "Hell, yeah. Here comes the movie," and in Venice, it's very elegant, and respectful...It's decadence. It's such a fun way to formalize a movie that is for us a down-and-dirty, gritty movie. And to see it with the red carpet, and rolling up in a Maserati.

I've protected my protracted period of infancy. For many years. And I have no desire to become an adult.

I've always had great independence on everything I've done. Nobody's ever told me not to do anything.