I never overestimate the audience, nor do I underestimate them. I just have a very rational idea as to who we’re dealing with, and that we’re not making a picture for Harvard Law School, we’re making a picture for middle-class people, the people that you see on the subway, or the people that you see in a restaurant. Just normal people.

I have ten commandments. The first nine are, thou shalt not bore. The tenth is, thou shalt have right of final cut.

Trust your own instinct. Your mistakes might as well be your own, instead of someone else's.

I'm delighted with it, because it used to be that films were the lowest form of art. Now we've got something to look down on.

I met a lot of hard-boiled eggs in my life, but you - you're twenty minutes.

I had one life. And what did I do? Wasted it in some palooka preliminaries in Spain, just before Hitler and Chamberlain warm up for the main event.

[about the Hotel Marmont on Sunset Blvd., a piece of Hollywood history] I would rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel.