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

For a house, somewhere near Los Angeles I found an old church. Very old, no longer used. So we moved the church to the land, and I took off the steeple, and I got my hands dirty.

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.

I worked for UFA as a set designer, you know.

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

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.

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