When you are a beginning film maker you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is survival and being able to get to your next picture.

One of the most telling things about film school is you've got a lot of students wandering around saying, "Oh, I wish I could make a movie. I wish I could make a movie."

People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians.

It's hard work making movies. It's like being a doctor: you work long hours, very hard hours, and it's emotional, tense work. If you don't really love it, then it ain't worth it.

The script is what you`ve dreamed up - this is what it should be. The film is what you end up with.

That had always been my purpose: to get people back in touch with what makes us so valuable as a human race.

If I make a movie that has a whole bunch of music in it, I get to listen to the music all day long, and I don't have to say, 'Well, I gotta go back to work and I gotta stop listening to the music.' I get to listen to music and go to work.