It`s sick. I want nothing to do with it.

When you are making the one you are doing, you think it is the greatest film going. And then you do another one and it is a great film.

I never felt comfortable in real life very well. It`s always been an awkward kind of thing for me and so when I hit the stage I just sensed freedom. I sensed here`s a place that I can have all the experiences of life and not feel uncomfortable about it.

If you`re older you want to tell stories about the pool of human life and living and to communicate, not only to your age group but to do an age group that can begin to understand, that has enough experience of life far beyond the taste of life.

Now, there is always a tremendous fear of science and progressing forward into areas of the unknown and it is a valid fear. Some of the genetic alterations of food are a little edgy.

[at the 2000 Cannes film festival, of the "obscene" amounts being paid to actors] It`s sick. I want nothing to do with it.

You have to struggle a bit, hustle a little, and be willing to go bankrupt. Once you`re willing to do that, everything opens up and you get the freedom. My joke is that next year, I`ll make the first film that costs zero dollars.

We truly have an ancient part of the brain that was about survival when we were prey but we seem to have gone past prey. We eat everything and nothing eats us.

Early on I decided that I was going to lie to the press. The best approach to talking about my personal life was to lie.

I`ve made a lot of mistakes and I don`t regret any of them. Sometimes that`s the only way you learn.

America is in a difficult position right now. It has so much wealth, it has become obese and gluttonous. It will change but it has to get through this time now. It`s not that I wish I was not from America. It just goes through these peculiar times. I could live anywhere. But I wouldn`t want to abandon a country just because it`s being silly. I`ll do what we did in 1968, and try and change it and get some sense into it.

There`s nothing in the United States to do except the independents. Certainly not in the studios. It`s a situation where films are made for $100m and they knock out all competition. Their audiences are eight to 20. It feels silly being a 60-plus year-old man in those films, which are basically cartoons and high technology.

You convince yourself you can fix the screenplay, because there`s a lot of money involved. But you can never make it work. If the script has a hole in it, it will always have that hole.

I didn`t stay in a popular vein. I never really got stamped like that. I worked very hard to keep changing my image.

There`s an understanding about addiction. It`s just learning about yourself. Either things are tough and you detach yourself or it becomes an experiment and a lifestyle. The thing about addiction is that you don`t feel things. It`s about cutting the pain off, whether it`s physical or psychological.

There`s always a bit of catharsis in film-making in general, in the arts. We`re really all alone. We can`t ever get inside another person`s spirit, and see the world they do. So we are alone in that sense. The only way we have to communicate feelings is through words. I became obsessed about that.

If you feel you have a film that`s valid, you stick your ass on the line.