You can fight a rumour only with an even wilder rumour.

Of course subjects are changing, and since I started so early in filmmaking, I did my first film at age 19, of course you grow up with your films and you are not trotting the same path all the time.

We live in a society that has no adequate images anymore, and if we do not find adequate images and an adequate language for our civilization with which to express them, we will die out like the dinosaurs.

My contacts with the film industry can be described in very simple terms: The industry does not really need me, and I do not really need the industry.

You have to realize that, about 20,000 years ago, there was a cataclysmic event when an entire rock face collapsed and sealed off the cave. It's a completely preserved time capsule. You've got tracks of cave bears that look like they were left yesterday, and you've got the footprint of a boy who was probably eight years old next to the footprint of a wolf.

I would travel down to Hell and wrestle a film away from the devil if it was necessary.

For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is going to destroy me, and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do--out of instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation--look at myself with objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing.