I'm too busy to be nostalgic, which is one of the reasons to keep busy. I'm not a very sentimental person.

One's relationship to time is complicated, and sometimes a day will drag on forever and sometimes it'll be over in a flash. When you look back, "I'm old," after 40 or 60 years, I can't believe I'm as old as I am.

My goal is to make as many films as possible about different aspects of American life.

There's a literal track: who says what to whom, what are people wearing, etcetera. And there's the abstract track: what ideas are suggested by the literal. And the real movie takes place in the relationship between the literal and the abstract.

Unfortunately, I never played an instrument. I can't blame my parents, but I wish I had had music lessons. It's odd because I think I have a good sense of rhythm, as they say in some fields. But I don't know anything about music.

I'm drawn to making movies about contemporary life. The reason I choose institutions is because they provide a limit, a boundary.

I don't really know what I want, other than good sequences, whatever that means. What I find is always a matter of chance, judgment, and luck.