I do believe if one keeps busy it's very good for a person. In fact, people are always rushing into retirement and we read in Europe that people there are talking about their retirement age and moving it to 67 or something. Well, back when they started retirement funds and everything, the average age was 70 or 60, and then all of a sudden now it's 80, and so. [...] And so you keep in shape, you keep yourself mentally in shape. And if you keep yourself mentally in shape, chances are physically it will follow suit.

When a naked man is chasing a woman through an alley with a butcher knife and a hard-on, I figure he isn't out collecting for the Red Cross.

Everybody thinks making films back to back is a big deal but they did it all the time in the old days.

If a person is constantly evolving, constantly reading new material and being exposed to new material and growing in life, then you're becoming, hopefully, a more intelligent and well-rounded individual. If you're not then something's wrong and you're sliding back in the other direction.

I'm in the saddle every day playing a screwball. And then somebody comes along and says, "How would you like to go to Italy and Spain and do an Italian/Spanish/German co-production with an Italian director who's only directed one movie?" It wasn't like I was going there to be with Federico Fellini. But something was there, and I thought, Well, I loved this story when it was told by Akira Kurosawa; maybe this is a good idea. That's an instinctive moment. A Fistful of Dollars was made.

That's the secret to a movie career - just keeping an open mind.

When you're making a film you start living with it, and I find myself sitting down and figuring out a sound or melody that would go with a film, or a particular period. It's not brain surgery, you just kind of feel it along.