The counterculture is always repackaged and made into a product. It's part of America.

When I'm trying to imagine something, I have a few elements, a few ideas, maybe a certain actor or actress I want to create a certain type of character for, or maybe a certain place.

I like to work with actors that have varied experiences. But I don't choose them because of their experience, I choose them because of qualities I think would make an interesting character and to me there is no one way to direct actors, there is only one way to collaborate with one person.

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination.

I prefer to be subcultural rather than mass-cultural. I'm not interested in hitting the vein of the mainstream.

I love riding on a bus now because you're looking down on the world from not too high of an angle, but people on the street rarely look up into the bus. They're sort of oblivious to this big giant machine, you know, passing by. So there's something very beautiful about the angle that you look at the world through.

A lot of poets too live on the margins of social acceptance, they certainly aren't in it for the money. William Blake - only his first book was legitimately published.