I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.

On everything I do I'm always taking someone's money, whether it's a movie studio or a record label. Somebody's paying for it, and I'm always respectful of that. But I'm never going to compromise.

Where The Wild Things Are we were asking a lot of a 9-year-old kid. We were asking a lot of any actor.

The fact that Maurice Sendak said, "This is something that I made at your age, this was something that was personal to me, and now you need to take it and make something that's personal to you." I don't know, but we made the Where The Wild Things Are movie that we set out to make, and Maurice loves it. If Maurice was anxious about it, then I would be petrified.

I feel like you only have so much time to make stuff. I'm definitely aware of that. I'm also excited about it.

I always aspire to that, where it feels like the film was made by the characters as opposed to the filmmakers. I try to be invisible.

I don't understand the whole testing-numbers thing. It is not how I want to make movies.