Down through the years my face has been called a sour puss, a dead pan, a frozen face, The Great Stone Face, and, believe it or not, "a tragic mask." On the other hand that kindly critic, the late James Agee, described my face as ranking "almost with Lincoln's as an early American archetype, it was haunting, handsome, almost beautiful." I can't imagine what the great rail splitter's reaction would have been to this, though I sure was pleased.

I was mad at the time, or I would never have done the thing.

The first thing I did in the studio was to want to tear that camera to pieces. I had to know how that film got into the cutting room, what you did to it in there, how you projected it, how you finally got the picture together, how you made things match. The technical part of pictures is what interested me. Material was the last thing in the world I thought about. You only had to turn me loose on the set and I`d have material in two minutes, because I`d been doing it all my life.

I don't feel qualified to talk about my work.

I don't act, anyway. The stuff is all injected as we go along. My pictures are made without script or written directions of any kind

All my life I have been happiest when the folks watching me said to each other, `Look at the poor dope, wilya?

A comedian does funny things. A good comedian does things funny.