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.

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."

I even think the commercial element of new American directors is really fertile right now. There are a lot of filmmakers with very particular visions, like Sofia Coppola and Wes Anderson and P.T. Anderson and Alexander Payne and Peter Sollett and Harmony Korine and Vincent Gallo. At least they're making films that they choose to make, and they're on their own. That's positive to me. This is not a dead period for American cinema at all.

I've always loved films, always. I studied literature and I went to Columbia in New York and I went to Paris for part of one year and ended up staying there.

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.

It's a sad and beautiful world.

Each one of us is a set of shifting molecules, spinning in ecstasy.