Do you know how writers often say the characters take over... But that is more or less what it always feels like to me, too. Even though that's just a way of describing how your brain is working, it's still what you tend to feel.

Sometimes when you're editing a movie, you have the thing that you don't expect - which is you make it longer and longer as you go along.

The animators bring their own spontaneity to it as well, because when they do a take of a shot it really is like just one continuous activity for them. They launch into it and do it, and they're not even quite sure how it's going to turn out when they're doing it. They're sort-of sculpting their way through a scene and trying to make this inanimate object alive.

You don't do background music the way a lot of more conventional films do. The music is often kind of a character in your films to the extent that sometimes you stop and watch someone perform a song.

I just want to make films that are personal, but interesting to an audience.

Anytime I make a movie, I really have absolutely no idea how it's going to go over. I've had the whole range of different kinds of reactions.

I'm very sorry for your loss. Your mother was a terribly attractive woman.