My definition of a 'friend' is, coming from Chicago, someone who says, 'Yeah, sure. You know what? Let's talk about what we can talk about. Let's help each other out. Your politics are none of my business.'

If you find that a point cannot be made without narration, it is virtually certain that the point is unimportant to the story (which is to say, to the audience).

My tendency as an actor was to correct people, was to say, 'What if we tried it this way, what about if we tried that way?' That's terrible habit for an actor, but that's a good habit for director. So I became a director.

The correct unit of study is not the play; it is the scene.

The great movie can be as free of being a record of the progress of the protagonist as is a dream.

The terror and beauty of the dream come from the connection of previously unrelated mundanities of life.

Like Lincoln said: "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong," and I feel the same way about the leftist dismantling of the West. If that's not wrong, then nothing is wrong.