When I was growing up, I don't remember being told that America was created so that everyone could get rich. I remember being told it was about opportunity and the pursuit of happiness. Not happiness itself, but the pursuit.

I mean I have a project that I have been wanting to make for quite a while now; and basically, it's a story of my parents growing up in the Lower East Side.

I certainly wasn't able to get it when I was a kid growing up on the Lower East Side; it was very hard at that time for me to balance what I really believed was the right way to live with the violence I saw all around me - I saw too much of it among the people I knew.

I go through periods, usually when I'm editing and shooting, of seeing only old films.

There's no dignity in hiding from an undignified story. You don't want to die the death of 1000 cuts. Just get the whole thing out… the entire thing, every detail, answer the questions and move on."

All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women.

When I see someone who is starved, they don't look alert. They don't have boundless energy. If you're too skinny, it looks like you're near death.

Old age is a tyrant, who forbids, under pain of death, the pleasures of youth.