You just don’t know when you get in the editing room what you will need as a link or a tool for a transition. If you’re in a room, and there’s a kettle boiling, get a shot of it. Don’t worry if people think you’re nuts.

When I write, when I’m going hot, I don’t want to write more than four hours in a row. After that, you’re pushing it.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with so many great directors. Different styles, as well, like Gus Van Sant. He just does the casting and the milieu and let’s you do your thing, quietly. Bertolucci, who can talk to you about your internal world in quite a creative way or just say, ‚Well, put your hand over here.‘

I worked with Steven Spielberg on Amistad… he seemed so very secure in himself that he let me do things.

‚Unforgiven‘ is probably an example of a script that I liked right away but thought, ‚This is great, but I’d like to do this when I’m older.‘ So I stuck it in the drawer for ten years and then took it out.

There’s no one way to be creative. Any old way will work.

Obviously, the cinematography of films is art, just as a still shot can be art. If I’m watching a Wes Anderson movie, the colour palettes alone, and the way they’re painted, could be art. With music, you’re a little bit limited, of course, because it’s only audio.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it three minutes; to collect the data in it all my life.

I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?

I write music every day.

I felt like I had a really bad case of writer’s block… Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can’t get it out, I start feeling bad about myself – a lot of self-loathing.

I have certain signatures, certain cutting principles. It could be a raw-edged seam; it could be leaving the lining of sheepskin exposed so it’s not perfectly finished. I invent new ways to do it, but the end goal is always the same.

The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I’m just like, ‚Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do‘.

I’m a writer first and a singer second. And then I started editing my own videos when I was 17, so it’s a process I’ve been doing since I was younger.

Usually I start with a beat, I start making a beat, and my producer side is making the beat. And on a good day, my rapper side will jump in and start the writing process – maybe come up with a hook or start a verse. Sometimes it just happens like that. A song like ‚Lights Please‘ happens like that.

I felt extremely uncomfortable as the focal point, in the spotlight. I really like the behind the scenes role, because all my freedom is there.

The genesis of a poem for me is usually a cluster of words. The only good metaphor I can think of is a scientific one: dipping a thread into a supersaturated solution to induce crystal formation. I don’t think I solve problems in my poetry; I think I uncover the problems.

Yes, I’m always – I’m always surprised when you make a film and you live with it a while and you put it out, you never dream that anybody is ever going to want to really see it.

There appears to be something to do with vehicles and movement that stimulates my writing.

Probably the reason it’s a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you’re getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you’re going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there’s a kind of bundle.

Making music is like shopping for me. Every song is like a new pair of shoes.

I can write a song in about an hour if it’s a simple country song.

I’ve always tended to write songs prolifically.

My movies just kind of sneak up on you. I don’t have to worry too much about what everybody is going to say. Anyway, I really don’t pay attention to what the world says about my movies. I just care about what my buddies think.

There’s people constantly asking you for something on set, so the multi-tasking of motherhood transfers very well to being a director. And I think you’re compassionate.

I usually write lyrics first, and then when I get home or close to any kind of instrument, I usually make a melody for those lyrics.

When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

In Hollywood, a lot of times when something is in development, it just takes a lot of time.

The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters – to make them personalities.

I am waiting for the right story to tell. Just like ‚Man of Tai Chi‘ just seemed to be the right story to tell. So I’m looking for that. Because I really love directing. I love developing the story. I love actors. I love the cinema of it, the way that you tell a story visually.

I’m sticking to the script, I’m putting that organic feeling back in the game.

Songwriters, you have to work – you have to wait for residuals. You have to pray that the song’s going to be a hit. And then a year later, you might get a check.

Doing graphic novels is cool! It’s fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out.

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.

Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.

‚House of Balloons‘ was special because I had no deadlines, and nobody knew me, so there were no expectations. Spent a year making it perfect. Every song had at least, like, 7 different versions to them before picking the right one.

You want to be a writer? Start writing. You want to be a filmmaker? Start shooting stuff on your phone right now.

For me it’s always contingent on getting a sound-the sound always suggests what kind of melody it should be. So it’s always sound first and then the line afterwards.

In 3-D filmmaking, I can take images and manipulate them infinitely, as opposed to taking still photographs and laying them one after the other. I move things in all directions. It’s such a liberating experience.

When I started making my own records, I had this idea of drowning out the singer and putting the rest in the foreground. It was the background that interested me.

I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work.

I love, love, love just being hands on at all times in the studio.

‚The Lion‘ all began with a picture of a faun carrying an umbrella and parcels in a snowy wood. This picture had been in my mind since I was about sixteen. Then one day, when I was about forty, I said to myself, ‚Let’s try to make a story about it.‘

Being a stunt coordinator, I have to take care not only of myself but I have to make sure everyone is safe.

I never have an intended audience. I just write, you know.

It’s hard work making movies. It’s like being a doctor: you work long hours, very hard hours, and it’s emotional, tense work. If you don’t really love it, then it ain’t worth it.

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

I want to make a good, solid kung fu movie.

I loved the material when I first read it, and the experience of making the film was a great one. So when we came around to complete the trilogy, I just signed on board without even reading the scripts because the experience of the first film was so good.

Eventually, it came to this place like, ‚I’d like to direct, but I need to find the story to tell.‘ ‚Man of Tai Chi‘ became the story to tell.

The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.

My own books drive themselves. I know roughly where a book is going to end, but essentially the story develops under my fingers. It’s just a matter of joining the dots.

In America there’s no way I can make the kind of movie I like to make.

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn’t something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing – it’s just an expression of me.

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

I think most of the people involved in any art always secretly wonder whether they are really there because they’re good or there because they’re lucky.

I have been trying to retire to the back of the camera for quite a few years, and in 1970, when I first started directing, I said, ‚If I could pull this off, I can some day move to the back of the camera and stay there.‘

When I’m making an American film, it’s more safe because there are so many people on the set to watch me. Whatever I do, they say, ‚What are you doing!? Tell me first!‘ There are so many restrictions.