People can't help how they look.

There are a lot of ideas I have that I think would be very marketable and commercial, but they’re not as compelling to me as the ones that are unmarketable, uncommercial, and unprofitable.

I always have to presume that each movie is my last movie because I never know if I’ll get money again.

It’s one of the great gifts of having so little money that you are able to make these kinds of radical conceits that you could never afford to do had you had a reasonable budget,.

When I’m asked who my audience is, I say someone with an open mind, which is not a vacant one and sometimes a liberal mind is not the same thing as an open one.

All I mean is, I’m not the kind of audience comedy directors want at a test screening because I seldom laugh, and if I do, it’s not very loud. That doesn’t mean I don’t like the movie.

Art has a smaller audience than, say, movies or other forms of mass consumption. But that doesn’t mean the work doesn’t have an impact in a way that transcends just a few cultural arbiters.

Part of it has to do with this business of being approached in public. I have a distinctive look – it’s partly the glasses I wear – and people seem to remember me once they’ve seen me.

I mean, there are many other directors who are probably both more skilled and excited to adapt novels or work within certain genre conventions. I’d like to do that kind of work someday, but for better or worse I’m too drawn by my own material.

When part of what you’re trying to get at is the truth hidden under a taboo, or when you want to nail a hypocrisy, laughter is a very useful tool. I want to show the painful side of existence, but there is no question I also want to make people laugh.