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

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.’

Mulberry Street was the beating heart of the Italian-American experience, but you don’t find those gangsters now. I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

I don’t care if I get $50 million to do a film.

He came to New York when he was 20. He lived in the States from age 20 to 96, but he brought his culture with him

I don’t know what DVD commentaries are about. I’d like to strangle the person who came up with that concept.

I get the impression from some people that unless they get direct access to characters’ thoughts and realizations.

It is my plan to create a city that is direct and simple… To leave out all that is ugly, to eliminate the unnecessary, and to give Florida and the nation a resort city as perfect as study and ideals can make it.

Al its commands, exhortations, and promises having the most direct tendency to make men wise, holy, and happy in themselves, and useful to one another.

These are direct effects of internalized discrimination based on their age.

So I started to think like, “well if I’m going to fight against this, I should learn how to direct”.

If I don’t direct a movie at some point, I’ve failed personally.

For every young person living on the streets tonight, there are many at home zoning out inside their homes through video games, and even more who disengage from school.

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.