Quotes from Abel Ferrara

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

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.'

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.

My existence is about making movies, so I've just got to rock and roll with the punches. You want to make movies on telephones, I'm there.

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

I don't care if I get $50 million to do a film.

I live with a bunch of yuppies and models.

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.

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

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

Most filmmaking is about shaking hands and just starting.

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

I don't need to push myself. I don't need to sharpen my own knife and slit my throat. I'm trying to chill it and find an equilibrium and a balance to my work.

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

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.

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

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 direct, and I make movies I can't finance. I can't raise money. I can't sell anything. I make things.