Life holds many, many, many mysteries, abstract things we all think about. In a film when things get abstract, some people don't appreciate that and they want to leave the theater. Others love to dream, get lost, try to figure things out. I'm one of those people. I like a film, a story that holds concrete things but also abstractions. So when ideas come along that have those things, I'm falling in love and going to work.

I have no problem getting financing. I have a problem catching ideas that I fall in love with for the next feature.

I've seen so many cases where lives have been transformed for the good and heard so many stories about this. The technique of Transcendental Meditation really works for the human being.

I felt I should have been the happiest person in the world. But I looked inside, and that happiness was only on the surface, not so deep. Beneath it was hollow. Up until that time, I had been thinking meditation was a joke, a fad and a waste of time.

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.

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.

Francis Bacon is one of my giant inspirations. I just love him to pieces.