Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot-the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.

I, you know, am all over the place — every category of pictures I have made, good, bad or indifferent. I could not make, like Hitchcock did, one Hitchcock picture after another. … I wanted to do a Hitchcock picture, so I did `Witness for the Prosecution,’ then I was bored with it, so I moved on.

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.

Well, nobody's perfect.

One's too many and a hundred's not enough.

[on pop idol Donny Osmond] He has Van Gogh's ear for music.

My Aunt Minnie would always be punctual and never hold up production, but who would pay to see my Aunt Minnie?