The family went back to Greece when I was young and we returned to America when I was eight. I’m told that at school at the time I couldn’t speak English, only Greek. But the language barrier means nothing to me. Language is just a bunch of symbols. People’s emotions are fundamentally the same everywhere.

John Cassavetes, in Ray Carney (ed.), Cassavetes on Cassavetes, London, 2001, p. 4