Ultimately, you have to pursue your own path, not someone's idea of the right path. You need to stay on your path.

I am always worried when someone says, 'This is perfect.'

You really think that on my films people tell me what to do? I don't think so. On my films I decide.

All good, clean stories are melodrama, it's just the set of devices that determines how you show or hide it.

Accept certain inalienable truths.

Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else's.

I mean, '8 ½' to me is such a great dissertation on the whole, you know, act of filmmaking and creativity.