A director in Hollywood in my time couldn't do what he wanted to do.

You have to think with the heart.

I was making films about American society, and it is true that I never felt at home there, except perhaps when my wife and I lived on a farm in the San Fernando Valley. But I always wanted my characters to be more than cyphers for the failings of their world. And I never had to look too hard to find a part of myself in them

These happy endings all express the weak and sly promise that the world is not rotten and out of joint but meaningful and ultimately in excellent condition.

A director in Hollywood in my time couldn't do what he wanted to do.

In the 19th century, you had bourgeois art without politics - an almost frozen idea of what beauty is.

Rock Hudson was not an educated man, but that very beautiful body of his was putty in my hands.