I've never been on a movie where they play five-dollar Friday. I must not be very observant.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

None of the pictures I take a risk in cost a lot, so it doesn't take much for them to turn a profit. We don't deal in big budgets. We know what we want and we shoot it and we don't waste anything. I never understand these films that cost twenty, thirty million dollars when they could be made for half that. Maybe it's because no one cares. We care.

There are so many parallels in society today [with era of J. Edgar Hoover ] that you can use, whether it's the head of a studio or the head of an organization, a major newspaper, a major factory or company, of people who stay too long, maybe, and overstay their usefulness.

I'm interested in the fact that the less secure a man is, the more likely he is to have extreme prejudice.

Fate pulls you in different directions

I'm so glad for the dozens of times I haven't listened along the way.