The secret to film is that it's an illusion.

You can be as rich, and famous, and powerful as you want to be, and it will not bring you happiness. That's said over and over and over, again. It's such a cliché that it hardly needs to be said, but people don't understand that it's actually true.

For 'Star Wars' I had to develop a whole new idea about special effects to give it the kind of kinetic energy I was looking for. I did it with motion-control photography.

Most artists, most painters, even composers would want to come back and redo their work. They've got a new perspective on it, they've got more resources, they have better technology, and they can fix or finish the things that were never done.

I came from a very avant-garde documentary kind of film making world. I like cinema verité, documentaries. I liked non-story, non-character tone poems. And that's the film making that I was interested in.

George Orwell was right. There's no greater genius as far as I'm concerned in terms of understanding human nature. I think that a lot of people just believe anything you tell them, and no matter what it is, they just go along with the program. They're perfectly happy to take their pill every day and do what they're told, and work and buy things, and work and buy things, and stay out of any complex emotional situations. And whatever the authorities tell them to do, they do, and whatever the authorities say is the truth, they believe is the truth.

When a movie comes out, I always go off on a beach so I miss all the craziness that goes on, all the hoopla, and the hype and the success, and how much it's making, or whether it's doing good or whether it's doing bad. I just miss it all. I don't talk to anybody, and a couple weeks later I come back and it's all over with.