I just want real creative freedom without worrying about, you know, car payments.

There is no shame in my saying that we all want to be loved.

When I buy a Nikon camera, I have no tolerance for the instructions. I'm ready to make some mistakes using it and get some bad pictures back until I've figured it out for myself.

There's the old notion that where there's choice, there's chaos, and where there's no choice, there's clarity. If you've got no choice, you've gotta be there, and you've gotta have your heart in it. It leads to a much less self-conscious life.

In between, I go broke because I seem to do movies where you're not paid a lot as an actor.

Reputations are maintained by the outside world, and they're created by it, too, by and large. And they serve as a hell of a device for privacy, because the more people look for something that's not there, the less chance they have of violating who you are. It's like going out there with a mask on, without having to exercise your upper body to put it on.

Yeah, I had actually tried to stop acting before I made Dead Man Walking.