Gangster movies are the inheritor of the Greek tragedy: it's the only genre where the audience will be disappointed if there's not a tragic ending.

When you're 16, the top of the world is directing a gangster movie.

Almost always, when we have fights in movies, they're done in these strange rooms where nothing gets broken. It's almost like they're in padded cells.

I did two movies that were arthouse movies; they were critically successful but made no money at all... but after making those movies, I thought, 'I wouldn't watch my own movies when I was 16, and my buddies where I came from wouldn't watch my movies, because they were boring.'

I'm the number-one fan of gangster movies.

You are young and young your rule and you think that the tower in which you live is free from sorrow: from it have I not seen two tyrants thrown? The third, who now is king, I shall yet live to see him fall, of all three most suddenly, most dishonored.