“Negativity is the enemy of creativity.”

The artist does not have to suffer to show suffering.

Some things we forget. But many things we remember on the mental screen, which is the biggest screen of all.

I like things that go into hidden, mysterious places, places I want to explore that are very disturbing. In that disturbing thing, there is sometimes tremendous poetry and truth.

I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas. But wood can translate ideas, too. You have wood and then you get a chair. Some ideas are for different things.

Life is filled with abstractions, and the only way to make heads or tails of it is going through intuition.

Many things happen that we don’t know the significance of until a little bit later.

My cow is not pretty, but it is pretty to me.

I just like going into strange worlds.

Be true to yourself. Don’t take no for an answer. And start your Transcendental Meditation.

I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath.

Intuition is the key to everything, in painting, filmmaking, business – everything. I think you could have an intellectual ability, but if you can sharpen your intuition, which they say is emotion and intellect joining together, then a knowingness occurs.

All my movies are about strange worlds that you can’t go into unless you build them and film them. That’s what’s so important about film to me. I just like going into strange worlds.

I think that ideas exist outside of ourselves. I think somewhere, we’re all connected off in some very abstract land. But somewhere between there and here ideas exist.

A filmmaker doesn’t have to suffer to show suffering. You just have to understand it. You don’t have to die to shoot a death scene.

What do you fear, most of all? The possibility that love may not be enough.

Everything that creative people think and do is from the heart.

My mother was given to a typical question: “We have always done this. Why should we do anything else?” But my wife’s typical question was “We have always done this. Why don’t we do it another way or, better still, why not do something else?”

My style when I was younger was still unique to me. I didn’t necessarily dress by the trends, but I was always aware of what was trendy at the time and how I could apply it to my own sense of style.

Get rich by taking something common and making it uncommon.

Keep a note pad and pencil on your bedside table. Million-dollar ideas sometimes strike at 3 A.M.

I love jotting down ideas for my blog, so I doodle or take notes on all kinds of stuff that inspires me: the people I meet, boutiques I visit, a florist that just gave me a great idea for an interior-design project, things like that.

In order to be creative, you don’t have to be original.

Creativity is the ability to introduce order into the randomness of nature.