If you're a painter and you want people to know who you are and recognize your work, you've got to build some long-term value.

I don't consider myself to be particularly gifted in the way that other filmmakers are gifted.

Surprisingly, I don't throw away that much. I don't move forward with a lot of things unless they're going somewhere. You also have to remember that when you're working with other artists, you have to be really careful about how you deal with that stuff.

Whenever you experiment with something, it's very easy to take the emotion out of it. And going back and forth between wanting to be respected artistically and wanting to move people is its own challenge.

Well, it's 15 years since Sex, Lies And Videotape, and if you hang around long enough you're having the same arguments with just a new set of people every few years and it gets boring.

I recently decided that I'm not an originator. I'm a synthesist.

We [people] are a species that's wired to tell stories. We need stories. It's how we make sense of things. It's how we learn.