“My existence is about making movies, so I’ve just got to rock and roll with the punches.”

Life is what happens when you’re doing other things, right?

Movies are only the result of where we are as human beings.

And the people doing them don’t even know each other, or know each other under pressure, or know each other when things are really

When I talk about drugs and alcohol, I’m talking about sex addiction, gambling addiction, eating addiction, throwing-up addiction. I’m not talking about mental illness.

My job is going to be to direct the film – I’m going to do it. And that’s where my job ends.

The world is constantly changing. You’re constantly learning and you have to be willing to get off your mark

Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want.

No one can stop me from talking about my movie.

It’s funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it’s fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

Even if you’re a poet sitting in your room writing a poem, you’re still in the world

My grandfather lived to be 96 years old. He was born in a town outside of Salerno in Southern Italy.

But I’m never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is.

My life is proof that I don’t need you to do what I do. If there’s no one to see it, I’ll watch it.

Making money is not gonna change anything about what I am, except I won’t answer the door.

The more you get into any religion, it becomes the same. It really becomes how you treat other people and how you get outside yourself.

Certain actors wanna get paid, they think working in a low-budget movie is being ripped off. But for others it’s like, ‘Yes, let’s do it.’

I would not dare to say that there is a direct relation between mathematics and madness, but there is no doubt that great mathematicians suffer from maniacal characteristics, delirium and symptoms of schizophrenia.

I only direct in self-defense.

You will be paid in direct proportion to the value you create in the marketplace.

You can act in five, six, or seven films in the time it takes to direct one film.

Our humanity rests upon a series of learned behaviors, woven together into patterns that are infinitely fragile and never directly inherited.

Having been an actor and a writer for so long – 20 years or so – I felt that it would be daft to go to one’s grave without having directed. It’s a natural extension of writing and acting, and so I knew it would happen one day.

Love in all its subtleties is nothing more, and nothing less, than the more or less direct trace marked on the heart of the element by the psychical convergence of the universe upon itself.

Anybody can direct, but there are only eleven good writers.