Young film makers should learn how to deal with the money and learn how to deal with the power structure. Because it is like a battle.

I was saying as a joke the other day that I love film editing, I know how to cut a picture, I think I know how to shoot it, but I don't know how to light it. And I realize it's because I didn't grow up with light. I grew up in tenements.

The problem with anger is that it's so consuming. You've got to take it easy on yourself at a certain point.

I tried for about two semesters in a preparatory seminary. But I was about 15 and didn't fully understand what a vocation means.

My father had this mythological sense of the old New York, and he used to tell me stories about these old gangs, particularly the Forty Thieves in the Fourth Ward.

Our world is so glutted with useless information, images, useless images, sounds, all this sort of thing. It's a cacophony, it's like a madness I think that's been happening in the past twenty-five years. And I think anything that can help a person sit in a room alone and not worry about it is good.

The first element that I connected with was the emotion. Sorry, that's how it goes.