When I'm looking for Zen and I'm not saying this facetiously at all - I would really rather surf, scuba dive, or fly my plane. And, when I feel tension about the grind of work, it's not getting the money to make films versus making films that constitutes the grind, it's all this stuff.

I don't feel insecure about any of this work anymore. Maybe I don't have what I had when I was younger. I'm not really hungry to prove anything to anybody, really. But when I stand outside myself and observe what I think are my strengths and weaknesses going into directing, it's what you just said, an affliction to organize moments.

I tend to have a kind of tunnel vision when I'm looking at an individual piece.

When people come together too young, they try to become one person. As you get older, you realize that you don't want to become one person because then you lose the person you are.

Sometimes creativity is a compulsion, not an ambition.

There's a lot of romanticisation of the intuitive actor and method acting and all kinds of notions about getting inside a character and coming out from there.

I've never acted before in a movie I've directed. This felt like the time to do it just because the " Leaves of Grass" movie itself is so much of a platform for the lead actor. It's really written for an exciting performance and it really depends on the audience watching an extraordinary actor having a great time pulling off this feat. It makes sense to me as a director to act in support of that.