Intellectualism came very late to America. That's why Americans are so proud of it. I found very few real intellectuals in America. But there are so many pseudo-intellectuals.

Throughout my pictures I employ a lighting which is not naturalistic.

This is the dialectic - there is a very short distance between high art and trash, and trash that contains an element of craziness is by this very quality nearer to art.

Your camera is the best critic there is. Critics never see as much as the camera does. It is more perceptive than the human eye.

Your characters have to remain innocent of what your picture is after.

I never regarded my pictures as very much to be proud of, except in this, the craft, the style.

And in movies you must be a gambler. To produce films is to gamble.