Sergio Leone was a big influence on me because of the spaghetti westerns.

Particularly as a writer, it is my job to ignore social critics, or the response that social critics might have when it comes to the opinions of my characters, the way they talk, or anything that can happen to them.

I wasn't trying to top Pulp Fiction with Jackie Brown. I wanted to go underneath it and make a more modest character study movie.

One of the things when you write, well the way I write, is that you are writing your scenario and there are different roads that become available that the characters could go down. Screenwriters will have a habit of putting road blocks up against some of those roads because basically they can't afford to have their characters go down there because they think they are writing a movie or trying to sell a script or something like that. I have never put that kind of imposition on my characters. Wherever they go I follow.

My parents said, Oh, he's going to be a director someday. I wanted to be an actor.

I think it almost all has to do with coming at writing from an acting perspective, because I didn't, like, study writing. I studied acting.

When I make a movie, I want it to be everything to me; like I would die for it.