A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.

Critics can be your most important friend. I don’t read criticism of my stuff only because when it’s bad, it’s rough-and when it’s good, it’s not good enough.

When the facilities of the government of the United States are drawn on an individual, it can be terrifying.

I had a teacher in art school who said something about the only works he really enjoyed seeing or found much in were works where he had a sense that a discovery was made in...

I had opportunities to be in stage productions during the school year that she wouldn’t let me do, but during the summer she gave her approval.

High energy creates more energy, more energy, more energy. It kicks off synapses, I guess. It opens up your brain and you think of one thing after another thing, after another. You can really open...

When I was on that boat, I realized the only way I would feel creatively challenged was if I totally changed everything about my environment and put myself in a storm, in a sense.

I don’t mind if somebody comes up to me and shakes my hand, but if I’m in the middle of a restaurant and somebody asks me for a picture, I can be a jerk and...

Many women long for what eludes them, and like not what is offered them.

He whom all hate all wish to see destroyed.

Art lies by its own artifice.

I bought all the stuff, but nothing was as satisfying to me as using the Rolleiflex because it was one shot.

Directing a film was something I was yearning to do. I always wanted to see if I had the capacity to be a good storyteller.

They sent me to these places to get the weight off. The diets never worked; the diets actually made it worse.

A lot of directors are overbearing and tend to make you doubt your instincts.

I feel different than I did three years ago, in The Cider House Rules.

How many times can you put together 26 different stories without running out?

Mattresses! Beautiful! Let’s go buy a couple of mattresses. Give ’em to people for their birthday.

Boy, oh, boy, people get jaded fast. I got nominated for an Emmy.

I’ve directed a film set in the ’50s.

I’ve been to Williamstown a couple of times, so if there’s room for me there this summer I’ll go. It’s like summer camp for actors.

It is one of the consolations of philosophy that the benefit of showing how to dispense with a concept does not hinge on dispensing with it.

I scored a 910 on my SAT. I didn’t care about education. I don’t know what I cared about.

I’ve been involved in something which was chaotic and insane. All I can say now is that I am, and intend to stay, a single man.

I think my longevity has a lot to do with where I come from – a blue-collar town in Ohio – and how I was raised: to work hard and respect other folks.

Tarantino’s movies, I really enjoy, certainly, and when I was 19 and 20, I was really into them.

I was in a Paris for four or five days and I couldn’t believe the reaction I got there. It was just bizarre; people recognizing me left and right.

Know your lines and don’t bump into the furniture.

Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.

I know I’m responsible for not having got the kind of roles that I’d have liked to. ‘

The word courage – God, I love that word. Words are so important to me.

As a very experienced writer once told me, ‘It’s in the rewrites’.

Biblical names are hot again.

I think one of the most difficult challenges in show business is the challenge of longevity and to constantly realize and reveal what’s already been there – like doing stage and singing and dancing in...

We are all winners here.

You have to make sure that your assets and your back is protected before you make any big decisions.

There are atheists and Christians, and there are people in both groups who are a little too heavy-handed.

There are different reasons to make movies.

I was always the second heavy.

I’m getting jobs because people like me on a show. I’ll take it. It’s nice to hear that someone like a Matt Groening is a fan of the show.

The Brady Bunch is a live action modern fairytale of family. In this context it’s less odd that it’s lasted for over thirty years; and why it may last in some respects as long as...

For hundreds of years, that was the major form of entertainment: The grown-ups sat around and watched the kids play. Now they sit around and watch the television. The actors are the kids.

And, granted, for a long time, the European has been dominant in certain parts of this Western Hemisphere, but by the end of the 21st century, it’s over.

I started in radio, again accidentally. I wasn’t looking for this kind of work at all.

You only have a week to do a show. I mean, there’s only so deep you can dig in that week.

The world intrudes in my brain daily. Since my brain is dripping with all kinds of stuff that’s out there in the world, that I can’t seem to be able to shut out, it has...

The people of the future will say, meat-eaters in disgust and regard us in the same way that we regard cannibals and cannibalism.

Every man goes through a period of thinking they’re attracted to another guy.

I’ve had a lot of people tell me they wish I were their principal.

But I had a white cat named Mercedes, who lived to be 16, who I got on the way home from the hospital after my automobile accident.