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.

I have a real respect for tobacco as a substance, and it just seems very funny how the Western attitude is, "Wow, people are addicted to this, think of all the money you can make off it."

If you go into a bar in most places in America and even say the word poetry, you'll probably get beaten up. But poetry is a really strong, beautiful form to me, and a lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.

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.

I think of myself as an amateur filmmaker, not a professional, in the sense that "amateur" means love of something, for the form.

Sometimes I make films about scenes other filmmakers would leave out, so I just make the film out of all the things they wouldn't put in. Poetry allows you to do this more than prose, for example.

Now in the States if you look at the TV, you see the advertisements, the TV programmes, the pop videos, and the movies, they're all the same style. I think it's very condescending to the audience to assume they only have a three second attention span and so they don't leave anything on the screen for any longer. I don't understand that.