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.

‚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.

When you are an actor, you have to stay inside this world, but when you are with the crew, on the outside, you are in the dirt, working through all the issues. It’s just a different way of working, and I think I preferred it.

I couldn’t have written things like ‚Low‘ and ‚Heroes,‘ those particular albums, if it hadn’t have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.

I was never interested in being powerful or famous. But once I got to film school and learned about movies, I just fell in love with it. I didn’t care what kind of movies I made.

I just make good movies. That’s the way I thank my fans.

I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic.

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

I start drawing, and eventually the characters involve themselves in a situation. Then in the end, I go back and try to cut out most of the preachments.

Making a film is like putting out a fire with sieve. There are so many elements, and it gets so complicated.

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

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.

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.

My experience with songwriting is usually so confessional, it’s so drawn from my own life and my own stories.

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.

When we talk about how movies used to be made, it was over 100 years of film, literal, physical film, with emulsion, that we would expose to light and we would get pictures.

The most miraculous process is watching a song go from a tiny idea in the middle of the night to something that 55,000 people are singing back to you.

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.

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.

I like the idea of working in different genres and transcending genres and hopefully finding success, and ultimately make movies people like.

I have always been pushed by the negative. The apparent failure of a play sends me back to my typewriter that very night, before the reviews are out. I am more compelled to get back to work than if I had a success.

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.

‚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.‘

For me, writing a song, I sit down and the process doesn’t really involve me thinking about the demographic of people I’m trying to hit or who I want to be able to relate to the song or what genre of music it falls under.

The movie business is a big gamble.

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.

All I do is make music.

Where I think the most work needs to be done is behind the camera, not in front of it.

I don’t have anything to say about other people’s art and their work.

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

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.

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

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

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

I didn’t have any agenda or plan when I started writing stuff.

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 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.

It is totally different making films in the East than in the West. In the East, I make my own Jackie Chan films, and it’s like my family. Sometimes I pick up the camera because I choreograph all the fighting scenes, even when I’m not fighting. I don’t have my own chair. I just sit on the set with everybody.

The secret to film is that it’s an illusion.

I work with my brother Finneas, and he produces all of my music in his little bedroom in our house. We actually tried renting out a studio for a month when we were producing ‚Don’t Smile at Me,‘ but it was really hard there, and we ended up just doing it at home anyway.

It’s a weird thing when you make records. You try to hear it before you make it, so you walk into the studio with this idea of what you expect to happen, and that usually changes. That usually turns into something else, and that’s a good thing.

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

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

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.

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.

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’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.‘

So many writers don’t like to write… I like to write, and sometimes I’m afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don’t want to leave it. And as a result, I’ll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

I’ve always been a follower of silent movies. I see film as a visual medium with a musical accompaniment, and dialogue is a raft that goes on with it.

The making of music is profoundly affected by the market.

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

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

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical – one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

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.

I might just write a novel next. I don’t know!

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

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

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.

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.