ABEL FERRARA

No one can stop me from talking about my movie.

The actors that I love to work with, they're hard on me. They're pushing me.

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.

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.

As barbaric is we are, it's a miracle we haven't blown ourselves off the face of the earth so far.

It's funny, the hardest thing to do is to make something look like it's fast, loose and improvised, and get somebody to laugh.

The secret is not to make a film that causes something like Virginia Tech to happen. The secret is to make a film that stops it happening.

I come from a world where you get the film done, that's a success.

My life is proof that I don't need you to do what I do. If there's no one to see it, I'll watch it.

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

Life is what happens when you're doing other things, right?

Mulberry Street was the beating heart of the Italian-American experience, but you don't find those gangsters now. I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

In the film business, it's basically honor among thieves.

As an old-time New Yorker, it's not that I miss the '70s and '80s or whatever. I miss the fact that there was a certain kind of energy that exists when people can live for nothing.

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

Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want.

The last day of your life is still going to be a day.

I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

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.

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.

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

I was born in the Bronx, and then my father moved us to the country at an early age.

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.