I never say I'm an "ist" of any kind unless I know how the other person is defining it.

The film [Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth] opens with an Albanian blood feud and goes on to delve into, for instance, prison systems, underpaid tomato pickers, the gulf oil spill. It's all woven together in a sensuous, oblique way that's not the same as the single-message kind of documentary we're used to, with an "answer" at the end. It's more like an exploration. Sort of like what you do with Birth of a Nation.

Never mind. Point being that you don't have to get too worked up about us, dear educated minds. You don't have to think of us aas real girls, real flesh and blood, real pain, real injustice. That might be too upsetting. Just discard the sordid part. Consider us pure symbol. We're no more real than money.

I particularly like Twitter, because it's short and can be very funny and informative. It's a little bit like having your own radio program.

I've never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It's probably because they have forgotten their own.

What is the real breath of a man — the breathing out or the breathing in?

That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.