It's a simple thing he [Frank Daniel] taught me. If you want to make a feature film, you get ideas for 70 scenes. Put them on 3-by-5 cards. As soon as you have 70, you have a feature film.

I love mysteries. To fall into a mystery and its danger ... everything becomes so intense in those moments. When most mysteries are solved, I feel tremendously let down. So I want things to feel solved up to a point, but there's got to be a certain percentage left over to keep the dream going. It's like at the end of Chinatown: The guy says, 'Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown.' You understand it, but you don't understand it, and it keeps that mystery alive. That's the most beautiful thing.

Instead of instilling fear, if a company offered a way for everyone in the business to dive within-to start expanding energy and intelligence-people would work overtime for free. They would be far more creative. And the company would just leap forward. This is the way it can be. It's not the way it is, but it could be that way so easily.

Because you make a world that didn't exist before, and you can go into that world deeper and deeper. It's unbounded out there. One film takes you into one area, another film takes you into another area. There could be trillions, zillions of worlds that exist in the big space.

I don't think that people accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. I think it makes people terribly uncomfortable. It seems like religion and myth were invented against that, trying to make sense out of it.

Sugar does make people happy, but then you fall off the edge after a few minutes, so I've really pretty much cut it out of my diet. Except for cupcakes. I like those.

It's better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted or you'll be too afraid to let things keep happening. Psychology destroys the mystery, this kind of magic quality. It can be reduced to certain neuroses or certain things, and since it is now named and defined, it's lost its mystery and the potential for a vast, infinite experience.