Abel Ferrara

“I don't have a problem with Werner Herzog.”

“The more you get into any religion, it becomes the same. It really becomes how you treat other people and how you get outside yourself. How you look to help other people, and how you get out of this 'I, me, mine' type of thing.”

“With 'New Rose Hotel,' I knew that I was getting paid a $100,000 fee to write, produce, and direct, and that's all I was going to get.”

“I'm about my characters.”

“It's only Western civilization that, God forbid, you talk about dying, when it's the only thing we know for certain, right? Everyone's going to die, so what's the big problem? 'Oh, God. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it.' I mean, I'm one of them. I'm not a big fan of talking about dying.”

“I grew up in the '60s, which was a creative time, so it wasn't that big of a stretch to go from a baseball bat to a guitar to a film camera.”

“Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting.”

“But I'm never gonna get to a point in my life where what it costs to shoot a movie is going to determine what it is. The limits of my imagination is the only thing that's gonna stop me.”

“A script is not a piece of literature it's a process.”

“I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.”

“Certain actors wanna get paid, they think working in a low-budget movie is being ripped off. But for others it's like, 'Yes, let's do it.'”

“I was raised a Catholic and when you're raised a Catholic they don't teach you to think for yourself. You're taught not to think too deeply about things.”

“No one can stop me from talking about my movie.”

“Making money is not gonna change anything about what I am, except I won't answer the door.”

“I don't know what DVD commentaries are about. I'd like to strangle the person who came up with that concept.”

“That's the thing about making a movie: You never finish editing. They just take it away from you.”