When I studied with Nicholas Ray he was always telling us, "If you want to make films, watch a lot of films, but don't just watch films, go take a walk, look at the sky, read a book about meteorology, look at the design of people's shoes. Because all of them are part of filmmaking." So I thought, perfect! That's a good job for me.

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

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.

Before she married my father, my mother was a film reviewer for The Akron Beacon Journal - a small newspaper.

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."

In Hollywood Westerns even in the Thirties and Forties, history was mythologized to accommodate some kind of moral code. And what really affects me deeply is when you see it taken to the extent where Native Americans become mythical people.

In the words of the ancients, one should make his decision within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break through to the other side.