I love how 'melodrama' is a denigrated term - a lower-class citizen to other genres. And yet that's what life is, man.

I think all my films can be enjoyed. In fact, they've often surprised me with how they're received.

I think when I was about 6 or 7, I would have said I wanted to be an actor and an artist.

I'm drawn to female characters; not all of them are strong characters.

It's absurd: half the movie audience are women, but Hollywood bosses are still aiming for men who are 20.

Like the music and the period, I wanted 'I'm Not There' to be fun and full of emotions, desires and experiments that were thrilling and dangerous.

You can be a smarty-pants director, but that won't matter if the movie doesn't work emotionally as well as intellectually.

I liked to act in plays when I was a kid, and then in college. But that's the last time I really acted. I always loved it. But my interests were more in looking at the whole, rather than getting completely swallowed up in a single part of the whole.

I think by around the time I was about 8 or 9, the idea of filmmaking probably took hold. I made little Super 8 extravaganzas when I was a kid, the first being my own version of 'Romeo and Juliet,' and where I played all the parts except for Juliet.

It's very funny because every time I make a movie, and I've heard this re-echoed by other filmmakers and actors I have worked with, you kind of feel like you're naked again. You have to figure it all out from scratch, as if you had never done it before.

Making a film is so scary, and there's such a kind of void that you're working from initially. I mean, you can have all the ideas and be as prepared as possible, but you're also still bringing people together and saying, 'Trust me,' even when you don't necessarily trust every element.

Pop music can get inside us and enter our memory bubbles. It provides those true Proustian moments, unlocking sensations, unlocking our imaginations. Music inspired me as a filmmaker.

You always feel like rock critics are frustrated musicians. I envy musicians their ability to live their art and share it with an audience, in the moment.