You can learn as much about the history from reading about the present as you can vice versa, that is learning about the present through history, which is what I do for a living.

I am passionately interested in understanding how my country works. And if you want to know about this thing called the United States of America you have to know about the Civil War.

We're having a hard time understanding where jazz is going. What happened to jazz?

I read cover to cover every jazz publication that I could and in the New York Times, every single day reading their jazz reviews even though I didn't put them in the films. I wanted to know what is going on.

I'm studying art and photography, like film and digital - a mix of both.

I'm very antischedule. Except for board meetings, I don't really schedule things or keep a calendar. I think appointments are caustic to creativity.

Never forget that the truest luxury is imagination, and that being a writer gives you the leeway to exploit all of the imagination's curious intricacies, to be what you were, what you are, what you will be, and what everyone else is or was or will be, too.

If you're an artist, it's OK to put your money into your art. The advantage, in hindsight, is that you become the film, and the film becomes you; you breathe it.