I don't aestheticize anything. I don't even use lights. The working girls do one thing all day: They make themselves pretty. That's their job and their money. In a way, I had the best makeup artists, hairdressers, and art designers in the world.

In the Bengali language, there's not a real word for blow job. They call it "doing the ice cream."

You can become an alcoholic working in an office in Los Angeles. It's very easy to say because I do this shameful job I take drugs or drink, but the real reason prostitutes take drugs and drink is because prostitution is a party area. It's not about desperation, it's the surroundings.

I don't aestheticize anything. I don't even use lights. The working girls do one thing all day: They make themselves pretty. That's their job and their money. In a way, I had the best makeup artists, hairdressers, and art designers in the world.

Sometimes the presence of a camera is like opening a door, because many people want what Andy Warhol called "15 minutes of fame." But prostitutes don't want that.

On one hand, they [prostitutes] don't struggle because it's simply their life. In Mexico and elsewhere, once they get out of these places [brothels] they have a pretty square life.

As a filmmaker I cannot make anything beautiful. I'm Platonic in that sense.