don't mean to sound weird but I get so immersed in the source material when I'm working on a movie that I kind of lose the line between what I thought of and what was in the book.

For whatever reason I was always obsessed with the potential of humanity's physicality. Especially since we grew up with such a non-physical philosophy.

I imagine the film ["300"] as if I was a Spartan and I had never seen an immortal or a Persian, or an elephant or a rhino for that matter.

It's difficult to find a movie that feels true to itself. You feel the hand of Hollywood, the moviemaking by committee, on everything.

There was this interesting quote: try and live your life without fear and desire. It's this concept that's like when you look at a painting in a museum and you are held in aesthetic arrest. So the I, the ego, is stripped, is gone. The observer and thing become one. That's where fear and desire come in because you don't want to own it, possess it, desire it, and it's not moving you to fear. It's like you're in this harmonious state with the object.

You know, it's a hugely difficult thing to take any work of art or drawing and say 'make that real.'

We can deny angels exist, convince ourselves they can't be real. But they show up anyway, at strange places and at strange times. They can speak through any character we can imagine. They'll shout through demons if they have to. Daring us, challenging us to fight.