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.

I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I've done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier?

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

I was taught that you can't be a healthy individual without art, music, or nature in your life. All my art is tied into inner cultural experience. It has to do with music or ceremonies or nature, even the funny ones.

Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live.