The thoughtful soul to solitude retires.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

I’m here to make good pictures. If I don’t see it, I won’t touch it. I may not make a good picture, but I still gotta believe in it!

Well, the wonderful thing about making movies, oddly enough, is that they’re sort of highly motivated graduate studies in one or another field.

A film is – or should be – more like music than like fiction. It should be a progression of moods and feelings. The theme, what’s behind the emotion, the meaning, all that comes later.

I was thinking of doing something – I’m always sort of fascinated, you know, I have a fascination with watching these kids on MTV videos.

If the boy and girl walk off into the sunset hand-in-hand in the last scene, it adds 10 million to the box office.

The DVD does make it a little easier for myself to trim things that are otherwise very difficult to let loose of – knowing that they’ll make it on the DVD.

We tried to make a movie that had sex and violence because we like sex and violence.

I don’t believe in censorship in any form.

You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse I made a Second Marriage in my house; favored old barren reason from my bed, and took the daughter of the vine to spouse.

I look at other filmmakers and see skills in them that I wish I had but I know that I don’t. I feel like I have to work really hard to keep myself afloat, doing...

Every single art form is involved in film, in a way.

Surviving is the only glory in war.

It’s part of the general global hypnotism to accept lies as the new truth.

‘Star Wars’ is fun, its exciting, its inspirational, and people respond to that. It’s what they want.

Once I make a picture, I never look at it again.

It always amazed me that he was able to do it, and that Orson Welles was able to do it. I never understood it because the talents are absolutely opposite – polar opposites.

Right now, there’s the illusion of order and civilization, but there’s a tremendous amount of economic tension in this country and the educational system is constantly eroding.

A filmmaker has almost the same freedom as a novelist has when he buys himself some paper.

Traffic is about drugs. As detailed a portrait as I can muster about what is happening in the drug world, from top to bottom, from policy to how things move on the street.

I mean, the truth of the matter is, I like the failures as much as I like the successes, it’s only the world that doesn’t like the failures.

Its not really about the movie business, it’s about staying in the picture.

Being thrown out of this place is significantly better than being thrown out of a leper colony.

I only knew a few people, literally a handful of people, al of whom had been in the Party long before I was, all of whom were known by the FBI and were known to...

I learn so much from watching films like that with commentary and then when you get to hear another filmmaker talk about their films it’s a really great experience.

You’re right on the money with that. We’re all like detectives in life. There’s something at the end of the trail that we’re all looking for.

Well you’re talking about a long career, a lot of movies, a lot of stars. I guess working with Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn was a great privilege.

There was a door to which I found no key: There was the veil through which I might not see.

I like to make all kinds of movies. I’d do ‘Ocean’s Thirteen’ with the right script.

Stills belong in the lobby, not on the screen.

Well, there’s no question that a good script is an absolutely essential, maybe the essential thing for a movie.

The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.

We started out thinking of this as a comic book. We filled notebook after notebook with ideas. That’s where the script came from.

The secret to film is that it’s an illusion.

The minute somebody starts trying to market that stuff, I think it would actually really be a harmful thing for the process of film making.

We’re both very very lazy, and having someone else do half the work is very convenient.

I don’t want to be made pacified or made comfortable. I like stuff that gets your adrenaline going.

I wanted to be a director and producer and writer, but in the early ’40’s the union wouldn’t let you get through the gates. You couldn’t get on a crew, or even learn to direct.

I think I’m good at amplifying an actor’s strengths, and minimizing their weaknesses. And they all have strengths and weaknesses.

Film is a collective experience, as you know.

We have too many intellectuals who are afraid to use the pistol of common sense.

So one of the most unique things on screen in American movies today is everyday behavior.

When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

I’ve had 79 to 80 years of show business. I started when I was 5 with a man called Tom Mix. I didn’t have time to go to school because I was in silent movies,...

It perhaps has a chance, a commercial chance, this film. It’s funny, it’s charming, the idea is original, it’s unusual and it makes fun of the movie industry in a way that it needs to...

Something becomes personal when it deviates from the norm.

I never learned anything at all in school and didn’t read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old.

Warner Bros. has talked about going out with low-cost DVDs simultaneously in China because piracy is so huge there. It will be a while before bigger movies go out in all formats; in five years,...

I personally have never made a movie in Hollywood, because I don’t want to get up in my own bed and then go to the movie set, and then come home at night to my...