The cinema began with a passionate physical relationship between celluloid and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it manipulated it and came to know it the way a lover comes to know every inch of the body of the beloved. No matter where the cinema goes we cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings.

I was in a relationship with a girl I loved for three years. Where do you go after three years? Then you've got to start thinking about other things and I'm too young to think about those things.

Whether it comes from a despotic sovereign or an elected president from a murderous general or a beloved leader I see power as an inhuman and hateful phenomenon.

Hateful is the power and pitiable is the life of those who wish to be feared rather than loved.

It's not that I'm universally loved. We know I'm not in New Jersey. But what they do say in New Jersey is 'We like him and we think he's telling us the truth.' I think we need to have that type of politics on the national level.

I'd always loved poetry and I'd always loved writing music and composing music but I hadn't thought of putting the two together until around that time.

I'm not an academic but I've always loved poetry since I've been small.

Then I discovered I loved writing poetry more than fiction.

And my father was a comic. He could play any musical instrument. He loved to perform. He was a wonderfully comedic character. He had the ability to dance and sing and charm and analyze poetry.

Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies when a baby is born or when we fall in love.