My father once said, 'If you're in the desert and you're dying of thirst, are you going to drink a glass of blood or are you going to drink a glass of water?' I think what he was trying to say, interesting coming from my blood father, is sometimes there are people in your family that can be toxic.

I don't want you to think that I'm up late reading a stack of Spider-Man comics and eating a tray of lemon cookies while sucking my thumb. I'm not doing that. But I am loyal to the influences of my childhood.

Film has lost something in the translation to high tech. It's become so super-real. It's with digital this and stereo that, and everything's like a CD.

I cry a lot. My emotions are very close to my surface. I don't want to hold anything in so it festers and turns into pus - a pustule of emotion that explodes into a festering cesspool of depression.

I actually enjoy working with green screen, because I can imagine all that stuff happening, and I really cut my teeth on a movie I made called "Adaptation" where I had to imagine four-page dialogue scenes with my twin brother, who was nothing more than a tennis ball and a gas stand.

I think anything that opens my mind and triggers my imagination I'm reading. I like to read science fiction and imagine the character. Anything that keeps my imagination flowing.

I really would like to be able to face all my superstitions that may have existed and walk under the ladder and do everything you're not supposed to do.