I know there were many good policemen who died doing their duty. Some of the cops were even friends of ours. But a cop can go both ways.

I always wanted to make a film that had this sort of Chinese-box effect, in which you keep opening it up and opening it up, and finally at the end you're at the beginning.

When I was growing up in the mid-'50s, the Roaring Twenties were a huge part of the culture. There were a number of films and a bunch of television shows that dealt with the mythology of the underworld from that period.

A lot of what I'm obsessed with is the relationship and the dynamics between people and the family, particularly brothers and their father.

In truly great films - the ones that people need to make, the ones that start speaking through them, the ones that keep moving into territory that is more and more unfathomable and uncomfortable - nothing's ever simple or neatly resolved. You're left with a mystery.

It seems to me that any sensible person must see that violence does not change the world and if it does, then only temporarily.

You have to put yourself in a situation, a lifestyle, that makes you do the work. Even if it's a monastery.