I think there's only one or two films where I've had all the financial support I needed. All the rest, I wish I'd had the money to shoot another ten days.

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

I grew up within Italian-American neighborhoods, everybody was coming into the house all the time, kids running around, that sort of stuff, so when I finally got into my own area, so to speak, to make films, I still carried on.

The most important thing is, how can I move forward towards something that I can't articulate, that is new in storytelling with moving images and sound?

Violence is not the answer, it doesn’t work any more. We are at the end of the worst century in which the greatest atrocities in the history of the world have occurred... The nature of human beings must change. We must cultivate love and compassion.

I have a desire to tell stories. And I'm never quite satisfied.

Sometimes when you're heavy into the shooting or editing of a picture, you get to the point where you don't know if you could ever do it again.