American Quotes

I start with actors that I know personally or I know their work, and there are things about their work or their presence or their own personality that make a character, that exaggerates some qualities and suppresses other qualities. It's always a real collaboration for me.

I like to rehearse with the actors scenes that are not in the script and will not be in the film because what we're really doing is trying to establish their character, and good acting to me is about reacting.

I like doing them and they're ridiculous and the actors can improvise a lot, and they don't have to be really realistic characters that hit a very specific tone as in a feature film. They're really fun, I want to make more of them definitely.

I have to tell everyone that when I finish a film and it goes out and is released, I never look at my films again. I don't like looking back. I don't even like talking about 'em! So I'm really digging back in my memory because I don't like to sit and look at my films again.

I don't like American football. I think it's boring and ridiculous and predictable. But baseball is very beautiful. It's played on a diamond.

I didn't go to classes there, but ended up at the Cinematheque, and there it opened up even wider because there I saw a variety of films from all over the world.

I didn't get the degree because in my last year, for my thesis film I made a feature called Permanent Vacation and they'd given me a scholarship, the Louis B Mayer fellowship and they made a mistake.

I didn't get my degree at NYU; I got it later, they gave me an honourary one.

I always start with characters rather than with a plot, which many critics would say is very obvious from the lack of plot in my films - although I think they do have plots - but the plot is not of primary importance to me, the characters are.

Hopefully, if not it's not working right. I'm like a navigator and I try to encourage our collaboration and find the best way that will produce fruit. I like fruit. I like cherries, I like bananas.

Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.

Before she married my father, my mother was a film reviewer for The Akron Beacon Journal - a small newspaper.

Baseball is one of the most beautiful games. It is. It is a very Zen-like game.

I love rehearsing because in rehearsals there are no mistakes, nothing is wrong, some things apply or lead you to focus on the character and the things that don't apply are equally valuable because they lead you to towards what does.

I always think the Sex Pistols and the Ramones as very, very important because they stripped things down.

A lot of poets too live on the margins of social acceptance, they certainly aren't in it for the money. William Blake - only his first book was legitimately published.

Cricket makes no sense to me. I find it beautiful to watch and I like that they break for tea. That is very cool, but I don't understand. My friends from The Clash tried to explain it years and years ago, but I didn't understand what they were talking about.

You know, face painting in non-Western cultures is a sign of collectivism, is a sign of one representing the community, it's not unique at all.

You know, Equal Interest played at the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival Awards and not one musician from that category was even thought of. Even thought of! The idea, that here's this vital energy, and that element doesn't even know it exists!

When Christopher and Charles passed away, I was completely depressed, I felt rejected and real down, and so Roscoe invited me because he had this spirit of compassion, and we had gone to school together, were friends and everything.

Well, remember that we were all members of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians.

Well, dojo is a traditional Japanese word for training hall.

Well, by the end of the millennium, five, six months from now, we hope to somehow manage to move into a new location where we have the whole building, so we can devote space to all our activities.

Well, actually, I don't consider myself a jazz legend or anything.

We were doing performance art as far back as 1965, just not calling it that.

The Vision Festival was packed every night, always has been for the four years it's been happening.

So, immediately after that, I got a commission to write a piece for chamber orchestra, and in working on the material I discovered it was possible to incorporate the Buddhist teachings into the music, so that's what I started to do.

So okay, I accepted, and I realized while working for that concert that I'd been missing something very important and vital to me, and that something was music.

So all of the music had reference, or is inspired by something of the dharma that I've come in contact with.

People doing the kind of sound research that I'm interested in still have a difficult time.