“I was raised a Catholic and when you’re raised a Catholic they don’t teach you to think for yourself. You’re taught not to think too deeply about things.”

That’s the thing about making a movie: You never finish editing. They just take it away from you.

With ‘New Rose Hotel,’ I knew that I was getting paid a $100,000 fee to write, produce, and direct, and that’s all I was going to get.

I’m trying to chill it and find an equilibrium and a balance to my work.

As barbaric is we are, it’s a miracle we haven’t blown ourselves off the face of the earth so far.

You know, these month – or two-month-long endeavors that millions of dollars are based on.

In the film business, it’s basically honor among thieves.

I grew up in the Bronx. I’m into rap music.

I’m a lapsed Buddhist like I’m a lapsed Catholic. I take it to a point.

How you look to help other people, and how you get out of this ‘I, me, mine’ type of thing.

The actors that I love to work with, they’re hard on me. They’re pushing me.

I don’t want to live anywhere where I’m breathing two million cars’ fumes and paying a zillion dollars for the right to be totally hassled.

I direct, and I make movies I can’t finance. I can’t raise money. I can’t sell anything. I make things.

I’m not a big fan of talking about dying. And then I make a movie where I kill everybody.

I don’t need to push myself. I don’t need to sharpen my own knife and slit my throat.

I don’t have a problem with Werner Herzog.

I’m living in a real postmodern time – every single thing sings to you to tell you it’s started, it’s stopped, you’ve got a message, you didn’t get a message.

Yes, I think especially the Pentecostal churches, you know, that there’s been such a growth in Pentecostalism. And it’s a rejection of the much more dour and barren kind of Calvinist worship and also, the very formal Catholic forms of worship.

To be Catholic is the only way of being fully and utterly Christian.

I was raised a Catholic on both sides of the family. I went to a Catholic grade school and thought everybody in the country was Catholic, because that’s all I ever was associated with.

You can always tell the Catholic schools by the length of the cheerleaders’ skirts.

I have never been brought up a Catholic – I mean, a Roman Catholic – we’re all Catholics, aren’t we? We’re Protestant Catholics, whether we’re from Methodist or Baptist or what.

I am a Catholic. Basically, the Catholic religion is ‘If it feels good – stop.’

And I myself a Catholic will be, So far at least, great saint, to pray to thee. Hail, Bard triumphant! and some care bestow On us, the Poets militant below.

I’m a lapsed Buddhist like I’m a lapsed Catholic. I take it to a point.