If we have a choice in how we die, I would say that's a privilege. I think we have a sort of prudish approach to death in the West, though certainly not in Mexico. In Mexico, it's a little bit freer. We're not so precious about it.

America is old tobacco: gold and green. It's lush and literally feels like wealth, like optimism, turn of the century America where everything was blooming.

There's something worse than not making a movie. It's doing it for the wrong reasons. Then you end up putting three, four, five years of your life into it and you come out with a thing that you're not proud of.

For me, lost causes are the only ones that are worth fighting for. The other stuff is not worth fighting for.

for in the absence of God he had found Man. Man killing man, man helping man, both of them anonymous: the scourge and the blessing.

What happens to me is that I am first and foremost a film geek.

There is beautiful in the grotesque.