I did a pilot for Anything But Love in 1988 that didn’t sell.

The moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.

I know why we can’t have a frank discussion with our policymakers – if you’re in the government or in law enforcement you cannot acknowledge that drugs are anything but inherently evil and morally wrong.

By that I mean, I think that it is true that politics and political heroes have to satisfy our need to be greater than mortal in some way, and that’s led them into creating illusions,...

When you’re in the battlefield, survival is all there is. Death is the only great emotion.

It’s always been my formula to get the next picture set up before anyone’s seen the last one.

Part of the issue of achievement is to be able to set realistic goals, but that’s one of the hardest things to do because you don’t always know exactly where you’re going, and you shouldn’t.

It’s a terrible thing to say I know. I’ve only done what I wanted to do. It’s a real luxury. I only made the pictures I wanted to make and lived in the places I’ve...

I long for the days when grosses were not even known. There was no weekend competition.

Our film examines the heroism, courage and prowess of the Soviet submarine force in ways never seen before.

If you can talk brilliantly about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.

To me the director’s job is to leave it in better shape than you found it, literally.

I mean, movies are like your kids or your fingers and toes or something, it’s pretty hard to pick favorites.

In every place there are 100 people who can say no and only one person who can say yes. You have to get a good piece of material to the right person.

I knew that if it ever got down to a choice between the Party and our traditional democratic structure I would fight the Party and our traditional democratic structure I would fight the Party to...

I hope we’re all kind of influencing each other now to keep the quality up on those things. They seem to be getting better and better and better as there’s not only sort of a...

This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.

There’s evidence of a social decline in direct proportion to technology and the industrialization of the motion picture industry.

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.