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

Most of Hollywood is about making money - and I love money, but I don't make the films thinking about money.

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.

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.

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

A lot of music doesn't do one thing or another. It just doesn't do anything. Then there are those pieces of music that thrill your soul. It's such a wide range, and it's really interesting that we all love different things.

I love paint. 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.

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!

Francis Bacon is one of my giant inspirations. I just love him to pieces.

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.

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.

Sugar does make people happy, but then you fall off the edge after a few minutes, so I've really pretty much cut it out of my diet. Except for cupcakes. I like those.

I was raised Presbyterian, but I'm not really going to church. I think the experience in meditation is pretty much where it's at for me.

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.

Happy accidents are real gifts, and they can open the door to a future that didn't even exist. It's kind of nice sometimes to set up something to encourage or allow happy accidents to happen.

Absurdity is what I like most in life, and there's humor in struggling in ignorance. If you saw a man repeatedly running into a wall until he was a bloody pulp, after a while it would make you laugh because it becomes absurd.

I love music, of course, and many, many, many genres. There are hardly any songs I would say that I hate. There's a couple, and I don't even know exactly why I don't like them.

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.

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.

I always loved smokestack industry, and I love towns or cities that have grown up around factories.

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.

To make the script, you need ideas, and for me a lot of times, a final script is made up of many fragments of ideas that came at different times.

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.

People think in Hollywood there's a family, where everybody gets together talks about stuff and we all know each other, and it's just not that way at all to me.

Somewhere in talking and rehearsing, there is a magical moment where actors catch a current, they're on the right road. If they really catch it, then whatever they do from then on is correct and it all comes out of them from that point on.

I think that ideas exist outside of ourselves. I think somewhere, we're all connected off in some very abstract land. But somewhere between there and here ideas exist.

I've said many, many, many unkind things about Philadelphia, and I meant every one.

More and more people are seeing the films on computers - lousy sound, lousy picture - and they think they've seen the film, but they really haven't.

I think part of the reason ideas haven't come in is that the world of cinema is changing so drastically, and in a weird way, feature films I think have become cheap. Everything is kind of throwaway. It's experienced and then forgotten.

I love Bob Dylan. Who doesn't? He tapped into some kind of vein and it keeps on keeping on. There's nobody like him. He's unique, and just... way out cool.

Life should be blissful, and blissful doesn't mean just a small happiness. It's huge. It is profound.

I've always loved the electric guitar: to hold it and work it and hear what it does is unreal.

I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath.

I always say Philadelphia, Pennsylvania is my biggest influence. But for painters, I like many, many painters, but I love Francis Bacon the most, and Edward Hopper.

A lot of artists think they want anger. But a real, strong, bitter anger occupies the mind, leaving no room for creativity.

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

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.

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

Every viewer is going to get a different thing. That's the thing about painting, photography, cinema.

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 mantra that you're given in Transcendental Meditation you keep to yourself. The reason being, true happiness is not out there, true happiness lies within.

I love Christmas tree bulbs, and I started putting them in my paintings. You've got to plug this painting in, and it's got a rig in the back, so that each one can be replaced if it burns out.

It makes me uncomfortable to talk about meanings and things. It's better not to know so much about what things mean. Because the meaning, it's a very personal thing, and the meaning for me is different than the meaning for somebody else.

I have no problem getting financing. I have a problem catching ideas that I fall in love with for the next feature.

I like things to be orderly.

If you stay true to your ideas, film-making becomes an inside-out, honest kind of process.

Humor is very interesting to me. My films are not comedies, but there's comedy in them from time to time, absurdities, just like in real life.

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.

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.