In high school, I read 'Silas Marner' and I was very attracted to this character - he was very rundown and he'd just stop, and things would happen around him.

I was once a shameless, full-time dope fiend.

Wong Kar-Wai is a really great inspiration. He's always referred to as the Jimi Hendrix of filmmaking.

I'm usually trying to react to what the actors are coming up with. And then the environment, and then the story.

Narcotics have been systematically scapegoated and demonized. The idea that anyone can use drugs and escape a horrible fate is ananathema to these idiots. I predict that in the near future, right wingers will use drug hysteria as a pretext to set up an international police apparatus.

When I grew up in the '60s, we were actually dominated by this, you know, sort of conforming '50s culture, even though we were like trying to express our own culture, like, the dominant culture was the thing that was forming us. And I think that that's true today.

My art teacher in junior high was a very out gay man and a mentor to me.