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.

As soon as you start making a film that's expensive then the studio wants total control over all elements of it because they want to get all their money back. If you make a smaller film you can try a lot more things because you can have control over it and not just be a hired director. The lower the budget the more freedom you have.

Just write a poem as if you're writing a note to one other person.

I didn't get my degree at NYU; I got it later, they gave me an honourary one.

One of our favorite Joe Strummer quotes was, "No input, no output." Meaning, we're going to hear a band, we're going to go to a museum, or we're going to go hang out with some writer that we admire. We're going to get some input, because if we don't, then we have nothing. It's a circle. It's a respiratory thing.

Music just gives me so much energy and inspiration. Music and literature in a way probably influence me more than cinema does because they're different forms and yet related. I probably know as much about music history as I do about the history of cinema.

Specific music starts feeding my imagination and gives me a landscape that corresponds somehow, in some abstract way, to the world I'm just starting to imagine.