Films today show only a dream world and have lost touch with the way people really are... In this country, people die at 21. They die emotionally at 21, maybe younger... My responsibility as an artist is to help people get past 21... The films are a roadmap through emotional and intellectual terrain that provides a solution on how to save pain.

The greatest location in the world is the human face.

Most people don't know what they want or feel. And for everyone, myself included, It's very difficult to say what you mean when what you mean is painful. The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to... As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad - to be willing to risk everything to really express it all.

The camera is the slave to the actor.

There's a difference between ad-libbing and improvising. And there's a difference between not knowing what to do and just saying something. Or making choices as an actor. As a writer also, as a person who's making a film, as a cameraman, everything is a choice. And it seems to me I don't really have to direct anyone or write down that somebody's getting drunk; all I have to do is say that there's a bottle there and put a bottle there and then they're going to get drunk.

People who are making films today are too concerned with mechanics - technical things instead of feeling.

I'm not good at comparing and contrasting. I take what's in front of me for what it is, although I guess there's something about Paul's realistic writing that is like Cassavetes.