The only way I was able to defend myself was to be able to take punishment. Then I got a lot of respect. They said, "Oh, he's okay, he can take it. Don't hit him." The guys were pretty big, and I had asthma.

When I'm making a film, I'm the audience.

I just wanted to be an ordinary parish priest.

If we just sit and exist, and understand that, I think it will be helpful in a world that seems like a record that's going faster and faster, we're spinning off the edge of the universe.

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

Well the thing is that the New York of 1846 to 1862 was very different from downtown New York now. Really nothing from that period still exists in New York.

Death comes in a flash, and that's the truth of it, the person's gone in less than 24 frames of film.