To me, movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script, one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.

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 don't have any one way to tell a story. I don't have any rule book of how it's supposed to be done. But I've always said that if a story would be more emotionally involving told, beginning, middle, and end, I'll tell it that way. I won't jigsaw it, just to show what a clever boy I am. I don't do anything in my script just to be clever.

Unfortunately, every time I have somebody play an instrument, it's always like, they don't know how to do it.

The children despise their parents until the age of when they suddenly become just like them - thus preserving the system.

When I was on The View, Barbara Walters was asking me about the blood and stuff, and I said, 'Well, you know, that's a staple of Japanese cinema.' And then she came back, 'But this is America.' And I go, 'I don't make movies for America. I make movies for planet Earth.'

I don't feel any 'white guilt,' because I had nothing to do with (slavery) whatsoever. I feel shame for my country that it happened and that's why I feel we need to deal with it.