Movie failures are like the common cold. You can stay in bed and take aspirin for six days and recover. Or you can walk around and ignore it for six days and recover.

My departure from Hollywood was described as a walk-out. No one understood that I was cracking up.

I learned quickly at Columbia that the only eye that mattered was the one on the camera.

When my mood was high, I seemed normal, even buoyant. I felt smarter. I had secrets. I could see God in a light bulb

The Hollywood structure was monopolistic, run by four or five big studios.

I suppose life is a little like that, isn't it, a message in a bottle pitched out to sea, to be carried by the winds and the tides, washing up on the beaches we could never imagine.

For years it never occurred to me to question the judgment of those in charge at the studio.