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 love variation in all forms: in painting, in music.

I think you can only be nostalgic for something you've lost.

I went to graduate film school at NYU, and at first I didn't get a degree, because I took a scholarship that was supposed to pay my tuition, and I used it to make a film. For the longest time, I never actually graduated. And about 70 percent of the things I learned there I had to unlearn, but 30 percent was really valuable. It's like Mark Twain said, "Don't let school get in the way of your education."

It's a sad and beautiful world.

It was a really interesting time in New York in the late 70s and early 80s, and the music scene was really, really interesting because you didn't have to be a virtuoso to make music, it was more about your desire to express things.

I like that cartoons are now not only animated drawings, they are a way of doing something: 'That song sounds very cartoony', or 'He has a cartoon face'. Like the word 'poetic', which usually means something different than a poem. But most of all cartoons are comforting, that's the real reason I need them.