It's always interesting to see a director trying different things, and on top of it, doing it right each and almost every time.

La Haine - first of all, it was the story of friendship. I was very close with Mathieu Kassovitz; he was somebody I met in the nights of Paris. And the hip-hop scene and all that... You know, it was very much about doing our own thing, and some of the subject matter was so close to what we knew and the people we were hanging out with.

You usually never know what you're going to do when you're making a movie.

When somebody is talking to you about something terrible on set with lines, and you believe what he says, sometimes it gives a strange vibe, because you wonder when that person is talking if he's talking about something that really happened to him and he's using the character.

I have a tendency to think that that stereotype of American movies and Hollywood movies doesn't exist. Of course you have the studios that have a very hard policy upon their artists, but then I haven't really been doing any real Hollywood movie yet.

I used to be more self-conscious about style because when you're younger, you want to exist, you want to show everything you do.

I always compare human beings to animals. It's a nice way to figure out who they are.