I began to exercise a lot of cinematic muscle with the precepts I had learned in the New York art world. Film was intriguing. I began to think of art as elitist; film was not.

In a photo, you just do a click, but in art you have to put in so much energy. This concentration of energy and attention says something that other media cannot say.

Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception. How many colors are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of ‘Green?’ How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye?

Cheat your landlord if you can -- and must -- but do not try to shortchange the Muse.

Art has a double face, of expression and illusion, just like science has a double face: the reality of error and the phantom of truth.

I started out really young, when I was four, five, six, writing poems, before I could play an instrument. I was writing about things when I was eight or 10 years old that I hadn't lived long enough to experience. That's why I also believe in reincarnation, that we were put here with ideas to pass around.