If I had to give a definition of capitalism I would say: the process whereby American girls turn into American women.

If you take a really good book, then the potential is for a really good film. But you've got to get it right.

I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think and novelists to see what I could get away with.

I have always thought of sophistication as rather a feeble substitute for decadence.

You see, I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

My problem is I'm a man of no convictions - at least, I think I am.

There was a moment in the early '80s when I wanted to work on films and wanted to live in L.A.