[Tim White] always spoke about his work in terms of forensics, as if he was investigating a crime scene. While we were there, they found the fossilized excrement of a lion that had turned into stone, and we would immediately start to concoct stories. Was it a lion that killed the early human? Of course, the lion could've been there three weeks later, or maybe 20,000 years earlier.

We live in an era when established values are no longer valid, when prodigious discoveries are being made every year, when catastrophes of unbelievable proportions occur weekly. In ancient Greek the word “chaos” means “gaping void” or “yawning emptiness.” The most effective response to the chaos in our lives is the creation of new forms of literature, music, poetry, art and cinema.

I don't spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews.

Of course, you do not do any research: you have to go there and do your film. It's not that I would travel there before without a camera and spend half a year on one of those volcanoes and then come back with a camera. You have to have some sort of a clear mindset.

If you go to Florence, it has all surface beauty, but like Venice, it's simply a museum of Renaissance times. Los Angeles is raw, uncouth and bizarre, but it's a place of substance. It has more new horizons than any other place.

I'm quite convinced that cooking is the only alternative to film making. Maybe there's also another alternative, that's walking on foot.

Everything that I've done was prudent and never has anyone gotten hurt in my films - not a single actor, not a single extra, ever.