I sometimes allow people to infer that I'm much less successful than I am.
One of the processes of your life is to constantly break down that inferiority, to constantly reaffirm that I Am Somebody.
I am in the U.K. for inspiration because I'm doing a follow on series to 'The Infernal Devices,' called 'The Last Hours.' It's a re-telling of 'Great Expectations' with 'Shadowhunters'... because why not! It's set in 1903, so I'm doing a lot of locational research.
I don't believe I am influencing anybody but myself.
I've been too productive for too long, and despite what anybody wants to strip away from me, I am influential. I am.
I am worried about development in the field of information technology, communication, etc. So you cannot say that I have become inactive.
It feels like your subconscious can be way ahead of you, as a songwriter. You can write a song that you think is about one thing and months later you're playing it and thinking, hang on, this is completely informing where I am now.
I am fine with 'Puppy Love.' I hated it for a while. But I still sing it. I have a country version, a sexy version and a cheesy nightclub version. I am trying to infuse it with maturity. I will never escape that song. I will always be Mr. 'Puppy Love.'
I don't know what I am. I guess you can call me a character actor in the sense that I'll never be an ingenue. You know, that's over. My shot was missed. I take a normal person and make them more of a character. I don't know what that would be called.
In my fantasies, I always wanted to play the ingenue, but in reality, in my bones, I am so used to playing the grandmother that I don't feel safe or even sure that I can do it.
For me, being Catholic was who I was and who I am, just like I'm Irish and Slovak. It's just so ingrained in us.
I have spent my years since Princeton, while at law school and in my various professional jobs, not feeling completely a part of the worlds I inhabit. I am always looking over my shoulder wondering if I measure up.
I wanted to have a personal life that I fully inhabited, not because I am such a great mom, but for me.
Whenever I am in Paris, all I want to do is inhale a big plate of cheese. And in New York, my favourite thing is a toasted bagel with cream cheese. Not only do I not avoid carbs, I more or less have them in every meal. When I start denying myself foods, that's when I crave them.
Everyone knows it's dangerous to ingest gasoline or to inhale its fumes. But I am starting to believe that merely thinking about the price of gasoline can damage cognitive processing.
I am very much afraid of definitions, and yet one is almost forced to make them. One must take care, too, not to be inhibited by them.
One shouldn't be afraid of the humans. Well, I am not afraid of the humans, but of what is inhuman in them.
Twice a year, I take myself off to a self-imposed 'writer's retreat', staying at a small inn or on a friend's farm, where I am all alone and do nothing other than write.
I am innately very shy, and I have struggled with that challenge for years.
There is a heavy Mexican Catholic streak in my movies, and a huge Mexican sense of melodrama. Everything is overwrought, and there's a sense of acceptance of the fantastic in my films, which is innately Mexican. So when people ask, 'How can you define the Mexican-ness of your films?' I go, 'How can I not?' It's all I am.
