There are no rules in filmmaking

Film is one of the three universal languages, the other two: mathematics and music.

The best way to make friends with an audience is to make them laugh. You don't get people to laugh unless they surrender - surrender their defenses, their hostilities. And once you make an audience laugh, they're with you. And they listen to you if you've got something to say. I have a theory that if you can make them laugh, they're your friends.

Any kind of dictatorship, I'm uneasy. I just don't like dictators. I don't like crowds. I don't like hordes, and I don't like other people telling me what to do. This is probably a reaction against people telling me what to do when I was a kid. I won't join any group, espouse a cause against some other people.

Most ideologies of the world are not for the individual. They're against the individual. Communism, fascism. Any kind of an ism - almost - they're against the individual.

Making money, getting yourself status in this world is not everything at all. But it has become everything in America. That you really have to get going and keep up with the Jones'. Get a house and a car and other things. And pretty soon you're stymied. Things own you.

No saint, no pope, no general, no sultan, has ever had the power that a filmmaker has; the power to talk to hundreds of millions of people for two hours in the dark.