D.H. Lawrence wrote several complete versions of Sons And Lovers and The Rainbow and Women in Love . I think that thing of having to begin again maybe enables you to reconceive things, completely reconceive, in a way that’s more difficult now. Now it’s just a kind of constant tampering.

I workshopped that first full draft with them and got some feedback and then I set it aside for three months and deliberately didn’t look at it or think about it at all and then came back to it a month ago. I think it’s really crucial for me to get some distance from my writing so that I can then come back to it with fresh eyes and read it as if someone else wrote it and be able to see, from there, the work that’s needed.

It is known about me that I’m serious and that when you write a paper I like, I will sometimes have you go up to ten or twelve versions of the paper.

I love editing probably more than I love writing. Writing does feel in many ways like I’m making mud or making clay, material that I then, in the editing process, can shape and make into whatever I want it to be. But, until I make that mud or whatever, there’s nothing else I can make. After finishing a rough draft, I go back and start rewriting oftentimes within the draft, which is kind of a bad habit because it means that I’ll take more shortcuts. With the first novel, I started to do something that I think I’ll do forever because I love it so much, which is reading out loud. I probably read my novel out loud like six to 10 times.

Like everybody, I wanted to meet Andy Warhol. I was impressed by his work and how daring he was. I think he changed the cinema completely, simply by opening his camera and letting it go. He dealt differently with time and duration, and he didn’t care about how people would perceive it. It changed the cinema for me.

I have never made any money from my films but I have won prizes and recognition. I have been on the margins forever. They all came to see me receive the award - there was Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Richard Gere and so on. I was imagining what they would all be worth in money terms. You see I was never bankable, I could not bring any money ever to the table. I like the friendships and, yes, the admiration but I don’t want to make a big fuss about it. I will go on working as long as I am able!

I’m curious. Period. I find everything interesting. Real life. Fake life. Objects. Flowers. Cats. But mostly people. If you keep your eyes open and your mind open, everything can be interesting. The secret is that there is no secret.

Well, I don’t agree with Sartre. I like others.

What I notice or discover has to grow in my mind. I always wait until the ideas and impulses are so strong that they invade my mind and I have to pursue them.

I remember meeting the photographer Brassaï. I was a young photographer. He said, “Take your time, look at things. Look carefully.” I liked the idea that it’s not the act; it’s what you have in mind before you take a picture.