Oliver Stone will never be happy with the first take. He wants more than that. When you’re delivering your lines, he’ll stop you and tell you some kind of riddle about the character and you have to go away and figure that out. If you’re hoping for him to give you all the answers, then you’re in for a long day.

When you shoot in America, you have huge beams of sunlight in the windows, very vivid sunlight - it's faster in a way.

Well, the first thing is that I love monsters, I identify with monsters.

I don't try to define the cosmos, I know it's unknowable, but I can understand my place in the world and my place in the universe through a mixture of Taoism, Catholicism, Zen or whatever I have at hand.

There is beautiful in the grotesque.

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.

I don't want to move over to Beverly Hills. My goal is to make the movies I want to make and support the people I want to support. That's it.