Everything encourages you not to tell stories of gay lives. There is no economy yet for that kind of cinema.

I actually feel that all drama has an element of comedy in it. A great deal of that I learned from writers like Chekhov who called his plays his comedy even when they touch on tragedy.

I make films that are very personal, and I always have. It's kind of the only thing that I think I have to offer as a filmmaker: the intimacy I've had with experience in a particular world, so the film comes from things I've seen and things I've felt. It gets transformed by the process. I don't think I'd ever start making a film until I had both the intimacy with the subject and the distance to make it live in a certain way.

I have a career now, and I have to say, five years ago I didn't. I'm 50, and you never know what works, but I think part of that is because - in this way that can't be defined but which can be examined - we cannot work alone.

For me, an actor is really, first and foremost, a person and an individual, more than they are an actor or a professional.

As a father, I wanted to make a movie that my kids can love.

To me, honesty and the difficulty of honest communication are at the heart of both my life and my movies. The difficulty of being yourself.