Anyone who's made film and knows about the cinema has a lifelong love affair with the experience. You never stop learning about film.

I thought I wanted to be a playwright because I was interested in stories and telling stories.

I associate my motion picture career more with being unhappy and scared, or being under the gun, than with anything pleasant.

So much of the art of film is to do less. To aspire to do less.

When I was sixteen or seventeen, I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to be a playwright. But everything I wrote, I thought, was weak. And I can remember falling asleep in tears because I had no talent the way I wanted to have.

You have to really be courageous about your instincts and your ideas. Otherwise you'll just knuckle under, and things that might have been memorable will be lost.

One thing that I'm sure of is the real pleasure of life - it's not being known, it's not having your own jet plane, it's not having a mansion the pleasure is to learn something