Sex is a doorway to something so powerful and mystical, but movies usually depict it in a completely flat way.

A film - especially when it's a personal film - is going to hit somebody or it's not. There's nothing you can do about it.

Sometimes I get ideas for lyrics in anyplace, but I work a lot in the studio. So I collect little bits of lyrics. I go through the box of lyrics I have and see if something fits.

I think that commercials can really ruin a song. You know that the person sold the song for a good deal of money, and that was the tradeoff. But, music and picture can marry in a beautiful way, and the reverse also.

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.

I supported myself by delivering the 'Wall Street Journal' and doing odd jobs. I love plumbing and carpentry.

An artist makes a painting, and nobody bugs him or her about it. It's just you and your painting. To me, that's the way it should be with film as well.

Music deals with time and timing. It's so magical, but when you get into it, every little sound and every little space between the sounds, it's critical, so critical. And if it's not there, it not only feels wrong, but it ruins things.

I'm not a real film buff. Unfortunately, I don't have time. I just don't go. And I become very nervous when I go to a film because I worry so much about the director and it is hard for me to digest my popcorn.

Film can't just be a long line of bliss. There's something we all like about the human struggle.

The business side of film has goofed up so many things, but even that's changing. It happened to the music industry and now it's happening to the film studios. It's crazy what's going on. But artists should have control of their work; especially if, as I always say, you never turn down a good idea and never take a bad idea.

Transcendental meditation is an ancient mental technique that allows any human being to dive within, transcend and experience the source of everything. It's such a blessing for the human being because that eternal field is a field of unbounded intelligence, creativity, happiness, love, energy and peace.

As a kid, I was always building things. My father had a shop in the house, and we built things - we were kind of a project family. I started out as a painter, and then painting led to cinema, and in cinema, you get to build so many things, or help build them.

You don't need a special place to meditate. You can transcend anywhere in the world. The unified field is here, and there, and everywhere.

Transcendental meditation is like a car, a vehicle that allows you to go within. It's a mental technique.

A lot of painters listen to music, I think, while they paint. But I hate to do that. It's a horror. I can't really listen to the music. I'm not really concentrating on it, and I'm not really concentrating on the painting.

I love super crispy, almost burned, snapping-crispy bacon.

I didn't watch much TV as a kid and I don' t watch it now. I don' t find anything beautiful or unique to the medium, and the only thing you can do on TV that you can't do in film is make a continuing story - which is so cool!

There are only 24 hours in a day, and my top priority is working on my films, but I love short film experiments.

A poet could write volumes about diners, because they're so beautiful. They're brightly lit, with chrome and booths and Naugahyde and great waitresses. Now, it might not be so great in the health department, but I think diner food is really worth experiencing periodically.

The ideas dictate everything, you have to be true to that or you're dead.

You're right on the money with that. We're all like detectives in life. There's something at the end of the trail that we're all looking for.

I like watercolours. I like acrylic paint... a little bit. I like house paint. I like oil-based paint, and I love oil paint. I love the smell of turpentine and I like that world of oil paint very, very, very much.

To me, a story can be both concrete and abstract, or a concrete story can hold abstractions. And abstractions are things that really can't be said so well with words.