All my life, I never really felt comfortable anywhere in New York, except maybe in an apartment somewhere.

Basically, you make another movie, and another, and hopefully you feel good about every picture you make. And you say, 'My name is on that. I did that. It's OK.' But don't get me wrong, I still get excited by it all. That, I hope, will never disappear.

I certainly wasn't able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.

I love studying Ancient History and seeing how empires rise and fall, sowing the seeds of their own destruction.

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.

Every scene is a lesson. Every shot is a school. Let the learning continue.

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.