As a kid I decided that a Canadian accent doesn't sound tough. I thought guys should sound like Marlon Brando. So now I have a phony accent that I can't shake, so it's not phony anymore.

I try not to discriminate against genres.

You can't make a movie for everybody. You can't go into it trying to alienate people, but you have to assume that you're going to.

The theme for me is love and the lack of it. We all want that and we don't know how to get it, and everything we do is some kind of attempt to capture it for ourselves.

Parents' tolerance of violence is so different to their tolerance of sexuality. If violence is involved in the sexuality it's somehow perceived as entertainment, but if love is involved with sexuality it's seen as pornographic and is not acceptable.

Sometimes I think that the one thing I love most about being an adult is the right to buy candy whenever and wherever I want.

It was more important to me to understand what its like to be this Jewish kid who felt he was so different at such a young age. I feel the story is about a kid who came to hate through love, so I felt I had to learn why he loved this thing so much that he also apparently hated it.