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."

The filmmaker Amos Poe was a huge inspiration for me by making guerrilla-style punk films on the streets of New York and - well, it's just a lot of painters and artists and filmmakers all within that scene, and it's very, very important to me.

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.

I like marginal characters, I like real people. I learn more from talking to my plumber when he comes to fix my toilet than I do from meeting a movie star. I think my movies are in the same vein as that.

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.

I don't like American football. I think it's boring and ridiculous and predictable. But baseball is very beautiful. It's played on a diamond.

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