“You see the world, you end up in jail three or four times, you accumulate experience. And it gives you something to say. If you don't have anything to say then you shouldn't be making films. It's nothing to do with what lens you're using.”
“There are limits if I try to act from my own experience. You don’t have to actually kill somebody to play a murderer. I just absorb the character I have to play into my mind, which is just like a piece of white paper.”
“My (musical) world is a little bit dark... a little bit off-center. I think of it as tragically beautiful. That is how I would describe what I love best: tragically beautiful.”
“Punk is musical freedom. It's saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster's terms, 'nirvana' means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that's pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.”
“I don't know if there's something in the Japanese spirit that drives that, but as a culture, I know, we're very respectful of artists--more so than in America, or so I've been led to believe.”
“All I know is that I have to act. It’s a compulsion. I’m driven to it. I wouldn’t say that I would die if it were taken away from me, but a large part of me would shrivel up.”