As a teenager, I was really trying to have fun 24 hours a day. I didn't start thinking until I was 20 or 21. I was doing regular goof-ball stuff.

During the course of a day, some dark feeling comes, maybe some sadness comes, some thrill, some great happiness, some strange humor. Cinema can embrace all that in one story, just as the story of life.

A lot of painters listen to music, I think, while they paint. But I hate to do that. It's a horror. I can't really listen to the music. I'm not really concentrating on it, and I'm not really concentrating on the painting.

I always say Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is my biggest influence. But for painters, I like many, many painters, but I love Francis Bacon the most, and Edward Hopper.

I like things that go into hidden, mysterious places, places I want to explore that are very disturbing. In that disturbing thing, there is sometimes tremendous poetry and truth.

I love child things because there's so much mystery when you're a child.

There's a safety in thinking in a diner. You can have your coffee or your milkshake, and you can go off into strange dark areas, and always come back to the safety of the diner.