I could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment.
I think there should be holy war against yoga classes.
I am torn between the beauty of the natural world, which you see all around us, and the idea that some dumb tornado could blow a telephone pole onto my sweet Camaro.
Ambition is to be the fastest runner on this planet, to be the first on the South Pole, which is a grotesque perversion of ambition. It’s an ego trip, and I’m not on an ego trip. I don’t have ambitions – I have a vision.
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.
Every man should pull a boat over a mountain once in his life.
I do other sorts of things. I act in other people’s movies. I direct operas. I write books.
If you want to do a film, steal a camera, steal raw stock, sneak into a lab and do it!
There are certainly laws and elements that make a film more accessible to mainstream audiences. If you’ve got Tom Cruise as a strongman, I’m sure it would have larger audiences, but it wouldn’t have the same substance.
There’s a completely new culture out there. I’m not a participant of texting and driving – or texting at all – but I see there’s something going on in civilization which is coming with great vehemence at us.
If you truly love film, I think the healthiest thing to do is not read books on the subject. I prefer the glossy film magazines with their big color photos and gossip columns, or the National Enquirer. Such vulgarity is healthy and safe.
I think psychology and self-reflection is one of the major catastrophes of the twentieth century.
Sometimes bad luck hits you like in an ancient Greek tragedy, and it’s not your own making. When you have a plane crash, it’s not your fault.
I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk.
I don’t spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews.
I have a great map of the Tibesti Mountains in the southern Sahara or Northern Chad. It’s a dream of mine to go there, but it’s such a volatile area, you have to be prudent.
In the Chauvet Cave, there is a painting of a bison embracing the lower part of a naked female body. Why does Pablo Picasso, who had no knowledge of the Chauvet Cave, use exactly the same motif in his series of drawings of the Minotaur and the woman? Very, very strange.
I like and I love everything that has to do with cinema: writing, directing, editing, creating music, and even acting.
If you’re purely after facts, please buy yourself the phone directory of Manhattan. It has four million times correct facts. But it doesn’t illuminate.
I’m not into digital marketing, downloading, or streaming – I’ve always been a man of the theaters.