But usually I'll wake up and start writing about nine o'clock. I'll probably write for about three hours, and I'll do that over the next month and a half.

I write in the mornings. During my down time.

You gotta make the movie you want to make.

I'm not saying they won't be bigger projects someday.

And I love doing my own projects; that's what I've always wanted to do.

My partner, Beth Alexander, and I want to produce smaller films, but commercially viable films that will enable me to make the kinds of movies I want to make.

I have consciously not taken the role of a gangster, which has been offered to me far too many times.

The constraints of melodrama can be a great blessing, because they demand that all the characters involved - as absurd and extreme as they may initially seem - must stay utterly rooted in their own reality, or the whole project collapses.

It's more interesting because you get to research the history of the period, and all the different aesthetic elements that make a film, particularly this film, so stunning.

As a director you have to be careful you don't over-design the film. You have to be careful that the period aspect does not take over.

I didn't know you had to change diapers so often. I couldn't believe it - we must change them 10 times a day - each. So that's 20 diapers a piece a day.

When I write a screenplay, and when I direct, I always pull lines out.

I never go overbudget on my movies.

I like to see how I can do it for less money.

I was dissatisfied just being an actor.

People wear shorts to the Broadway theater. There should be a law against that.

As a director, I also get to sit and watch actors and learn from them in a way that I don't get to do when I'm just acting.

Big Night and The Impostors are both things that I wrote.

Sometimes it's difficult directing yourself on film because you can't quite separate yourself from the subject.

But usually I'll wake up and start writing about nine o'clock. I'll probably write for about three hours, and I'll do that over the next month and a half.

I'm actually one who will encourage directors to cut my lines.

I was always attracted to the past as a kid.

I mean, Scorsese's a genius, and that's one way of shooting.

Even The Impostors, as silly as it is, is a very intimate film, in a way.

The thing is, I'm a very practical filmmaker.

I've always considered myself an actor first and foremost.

I would rather just do the things I want to do.

I'm not interested in wasting money on a project.

So yes, I hope to act in other people's movies, big and small, because that's how I make my living, really.

Like Joseph Mitchell, I would scour the streets of New York and find little pieces of what other people think of as junk - and collect it.

I don't like to move the camera that much anyway.

I wanted to be an actor when I was a kid.

The majority of directors I've worked with didn't know how to talk to actors.

I make time to write.

I like to use all of myself, and acting wasn't doing that.

I'd read Up in the Old Hotel, and I wanted to do something with Mitchell's stuff for a long time.

I'm a control freak. Totally.

I love directing - it's always so involving, so challenging.

Even when I'm writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I'm writing for.

My singing is my hobby. It's me and my brother. We just enjoy writing music.

I don't know if there is any one secret to successful writing, but one important step is to move beyond imitation and discover what you can write that no one else can - that is, find out who you are and write that in an appropriate narrative and style.

That music and the lyrical aspects of Razorblade Romance is so personal to me that, now with me being grown up a bit and meeting new people and doing new things, it makes me look at the same things I was writing about back in the day through a different colored lens.

As a member of this court I am not justified in writing my private notions of policy into the Constitution, no matter how deeply I may cherish them or how mischievous I may deem their disregard.

I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.

For me, writing is a concentrated form of thinking.

Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century.

I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs.

Book writing is a little different because, in my case, my editor is a year younger than me and basically has the same sensibility as me.

Writing is a dog's life, but the only life worth living.