What we're trying to do is find two or more shots the juxtaposition of which will give us the idea.

Society functions in a way much more interesting than the multiple-choice pattern we have been rewarded for succeeding at in school. Success in life comes not from the ability to choose between the four presented answers, but from the rather more difficult and painfully acquired ability to formulate the questions.

We Americans have always considered Hollywood, at best, a sinkhole of depraved venality. And, of course, it is. It is not a protective monastery of aesthetic truth. It is a place where everything is incredibly expensive.

We're all put to the test... but it never comes in the form or at the point we would prefer, does it?

Hitchcock denigrated American films, saying they were all 'pictures of people talking' - as, indeed, most of them are.

You know, I once read an interesting book which said that, uh, most people lost in the wilds, they, they die of shame. Yeah, see, they die of shame. 'What did I do wrong? How could I have gotten myself into this?' And so they sit there and they... die. Because they didn't do the one thing that would save their lives. Thinking.

Any time two characters are talking about a third, the scene is a crock of s***.