I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.

Domesticity is a fact of how social structure works. So if you say, "Well being domestic as a female is a negative trait," then that would be like saying, "Having a family - because that's an economic unit designed to further the economic structures in the world - if you have a family then you're subjugated."

I'd wanted to be a writer and when I came back to New York worked as a musician too, but I found my writing starting to get more and more referential to cinema.

Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul.

When I hear the word independent I reach for my revolver. At this point, what the hell does that mean? The English Patient is an independent film... Hootie and the Blowfish are alternative music. I'm the Queen of Denmark. I don't know what it means anymore.

Jim Jarmusch: Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision.

I like to rehearse with the actors scenes that are not in the script and will not be in the film because what we're really doing is trying to establish their character, and good acting to me is about reacting.