You have to be involved and relate to the characters in order to make a film that is true emotionally.

I was lucky enough to know Maurice Sendak, and talked to him about doing the movie. For a while, I was really apprehensive of it, because Where The Wild Things Are is a book I love so much, and I didn't want to add something to it just to be able to make a movie, or put my stamp on it, or something like that.

You make a movie that is about what you want it to be about and let people have their reaction to it.

Don't differentiate between 'This is a job' and 'This is what I'm doing for fun.' It's all simultaneous.

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

I'm not one to intellectualize why I did something.

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.