[Julie Marie Pacino]is a great ballplayer, which I wanted to be. She did make four films by the time she was 14 but we're not going to talk about that.

I want to be involved in things I can be really proud of. There's a lot of bad films being made and I don't understand how they got the money for it. That said, there's a lot of bad telly, but there's also a lot of very high quality that is something I'd be much more proud of than a mediocre film.

The structure of my novels has nothing to do with the narrative mode of cinema. My novels would be very difficult to film without ruining them completely. I think this is the area where writers need to place ourselves: from a position of absolute modernity and contemporaneity, creating a culture of objects which cinema cannot.

I would like to sing the theme tune of a big film - something like 'Titanic'.

I was free always. I could work without the money, to film this and that. But this is another point, because now I'm alone, and I can just use it when I want. I think the digital cameras have changed my view. Even though sometimes, including the installations that I show, I mix 35mm filming and video handmade.

Don't shy away from producing your own film and being in charge of its business end as well.

Juilliard definitely emphasizes the theater. They don't train - at all really - for film acting. It's mostly process-oriented, pretty much for the stage.

The theater and film, they're like two completely different mediums.

I don't ask my students to have studied film or any education in general. What I ask them is to come and sit and tell me a story, and the way they choose it and tell it, for me, the best criteria for whether they are right for making films. There's nothing more important than being able to tell your story orally.

I don't do films because they tell a particular kind of story, I do films with stories that touch me.