I've begun to believe more and more that movies are all about transitions, that the key to making good movies is to pay attention to the transition between scenes. And not just how you get from one scene to the next, but where you leave a scene and where you come into a new scene. Those are some of the most important decisions that you make. It can be the difference between a movie that works and a movie that doesn't.

I'm still very affected and moved by their music - maybe in a way that's different from someone who grew up around it.

In the land of ideas, you are always renting.

The key is, how do you feel with the one asshole? They cannot be talked to. That's why they are assholes.

I know why we can't have a frank discussion with our policymakers - if you're in the government or in law enforcement you cannot acknowledge that drugs are anything but inherently evil and morally wrong.

There are people who are originals and the stuff they make really is new. It isn't based on anything else. But I've decided I'm not that-I was never that. My abilities are to synthesize a wide range of references and ideas into something that feels relatively unified and coherent.

When a film like Chris Nolan's Memento cannot get picked up, to me independent film is over. It's dead.