All you can do is learn the skills of movies. Neither colleges nor anyone else can teach you creativity. They can teach you abilities to work with - you know how to use the gifts you've been born with.

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.

Capitalism is supposedly free enterprise. Supposedly about the free individual. But capitalism itself is so massive that the guy on the street gets caught in paying rent, taxes, and he doesn't own himself at all.

When you get to political machines that can control a state, then you're really into organized crime - almost. You're fighting a political mafia.

I happen to think that Jesus was the greatest hero of all time. I don't think you could invent that kind of a hero. He had it all - everything that the human spirit could yearn for. There is nothing that man ever said or did, by word or deed that is evil. That is not full of compassion. That is not full of love for your neighbor whether he's down or out, or up - no matter what. He taught that you must love your neighbor whether he's a crook, a beggar, whether he's rich or poor.

Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream, it takes over as the number one hormone; it bosses the enzymes; directs the pineal gland; plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to film is more film.