Jim Jarmusch

Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.

If you go into a bar in most places in America and even say the word poetry, you'll probably get beaten up. But poetry is a really strong, beautiful form to me, and a lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.

I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn't play, it has a poignancy to it.

I'd wanted to be a writer and when I came back to New York worked as a musician too, but I found my writing starting to get more and more referential to cinema.

I have to tell everyone that when I finish a film and it goes out and is released, I never look at my films again. I don't like looking back. I don't even like talking about 'em! So I'm really digging back in my memory because I don't like to sit and look at my films again.

When I left Ohio when I was 17 and ended up in New York and realised that not all films had the giant crab monsters in them, it really opened up a lot of things for me.

I've always loved films, always. I studied literature and I went to Columbia in New York and I went to Paris for part of one year and ended up staying there.

I think of poets as outlaw visionaries in a way.

I didn't go to classes there, but ended up at the Cinematheque, and there it opened up even wider because there I saw a variety of films from all over the world.

I love rehearsing because in rehearsals there are no mistakes, nothing is wrong, some things apply or lead you to focus on the character and the things that don't apply are equally valuable because they lead you to towards what does.

Poets are always ahead of things in a certain way, their sense of language and their vision.

A lot of poets too live on the margins of social acceptance, they certainly aren't in it for the money. William Blake - only his first book was legitimately published.