You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Mexicans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn't mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life. And that's what makes young people more into a filmmaker than academia.

I'm not a journalist; I'm a poet. I had a discourse, an encounter with these people but I never had a list of questions.

I work very fast and steadily, and I don't hardly ever notice that I'm working. It feels like just breathing or walking when I do films.

If you don’t have a deal in two days, you won’t have a deal in two years.

If I had to climb into hell and wrestle the devil himself for one of my films, I would do it.

I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.

[This kind of strange mythology about me.] I've pulled a huge steamboat over a mountain; I've done a feature film with all the actors acting under hypnosis - things that are very unusual.