I like what I see now in China but I think the Japanese are a step ahead into craziness and weirdness. I go to galleries there that are the size of a New York elevator and every time I'm surprised by the amazing things I find. I really hope I'll be able to promote some of these artists to show their work in the West.

United Artists wanted to do records with me. I had no idea what a rare thing that was... to make an album. And they put a guy with me working on songs and I got busy with films. I just kind of let it slide. Isn't that amazing?

I was writing a scene where a guy was choking another guy to death. You can go online and type 'chokeholds' and watch scenes where martial artists choke each other out. You can hear what noises they make when they go unconscious see how their bodies flop and everything. YouTube is amazing for the more detailed stuff.

Artists walk alone.

People must insist on the right to say no to be alone to stand out from the herd. Creative artists can say all this in their own way and in their own field by hard rigorous work.

The best of artists has no conception that the marble alone does not contain within itself.

Well Jeff Buckley for me is one of the greatest singers I've ever heard. And the reason why is he has an amazing range amazing emotional power in his voice. And the music he put around it also just had this passion and this soul to it and this spirit to it that very few artists have and he passed at a very young age.

I would like to see more airplay for all artists no matter what age. I think there's a lot of money being spent toward the young guys but a lot of the older guys are the ones who blazed the trail for those young guys.

New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age the airplane the atom bomb the radio in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.