"I am a child of cinema, and I am a cineaste, so everything I do is a reference to something I’ve heard or experienced or seen. And… we all do it, we all steal. The ones who claim they don’t, are obviously lying, because you do. You just have to make it your own."

"Silence is cinema! We are so used to sounds; we’re always talked at. Silence is very rare for us for a long duration of time. It makes people very uncomfortable. But what it does, it also forces us to perceive on a much deeper level because we can no longer just be told things. Silence is like gold. In terms of cinema from a story perspective, silence forces the audience to engage more, because if they’re not being told what to think, then they have to put in the subliminal elements. I love that personally and I think it’s an obligation we have, because then the audience and the film interact. You’re not just passive, you penetrate each other."

"I’ve lived on the border of financial destruction for the last 20 years, because the sheer joy of doing something your way is—you can’t define it. It’s like heroin. Every time that you express something, you have to prepare yourself for critique. It’s not like critique is a nice thing to get. We all don’t want to be yelled at for doing something wrong. But you begin to look at how people are critiquing, and it becomes interesting. So when people are violently reacting to an experience that you have given them at the same time that people are praising or loving it for the exact same thing—that’s when you know you have done something right. It makes them think. It makes them react. Art was not made to satisfy the masses in any way, and it never has. There is a great satisfaction in people cheering and booing at the same time."

"We need to remember that cinema is not just about, ‘How much money did you make on Friday to Monday?’ but also, ‘What is your actual interest?’ Filmmaking is an art form, and the art can inspire. But if everyone’s afraid of standing out and risking polarization, which essentially means it’s a singular vision, then the world will become less interesting."