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.

There is a wonderful expression: seeing through a glass darkly. Everything, even life, is inevitably removed from you. You can't reach, or touch, the real. You just see reflections

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

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

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

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.

At the time I belonged to the socialist party, and Hitler came to power.