Financially, it was very successful. Which is the most important thing. That is the only way you get to make another movie. It's very simple. The market will value you.

Like all art forms, film is a media as powerful as weapons of mass destruction; the only difference is that war destroys and film inspires.

I don't believe that art makes people violent in any way. I don't. But I do believe art can show people how to be violent and that's much more dangerous in a way.

I think that I am a pornographer, meaning that I make movies based on what excites me and what I would like to see.

The artificial world that we create through images will essentially become real.

Cinema is mass media, it is both overtly gross and exciting. It is our great mirror of society.

Creativity is narcissism. Creativity is falling in love with one's self as you create. It's self-indulgent.

In a way, art is a great way to release your love, fantasy, and desires. It's like a fetish. It's a comfortable way of excising a lot of your conscience.

Look at the birth of anything; it's always more violent than anything you could ever imagine.

We live in a beauty-obsessed culture, which on one hand is absolutely fabulous, but on the flip side, is also dangerously extreme.

Understanding one's own power is more interesting than someone being given something powerful.

Most people don't lay the foundations correctly because they are too impatient or too greedy or too stupid ...

. . . I still wouldn't be able to control myself around him, and I'm math geek enough to know that equation doesn't work out.

Write a book, not the book.

To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.

When you broadcast your book reading voluntarily, it creates moments of fascinating serendipity.

To establish yourself in the world a person must do all they can to appear already established.

Bigotry and judgment are the height of insecurity.

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but the living room in your fortified compound.

I would just go in my room and just scream out of anger because I didn't understand how a person could be so vicious and mean.

Every action is either strong or weak, and when every action is strong we are successful.