To humiliate and be humiliated, I think, is a crucial element in our whole social structure. It's not only the artist I'm sorry for. It's just that I know exactly where he feels most humiliated.

Everything is worth precisely as much as a belch, the difference being that a belch is more satisfying.

I know that I shall have lost to the jungle if I take a weak moral standpoint or relax my mental punctiliousness. I have therefore come to a certain belief which is based on three powerful effective commandments: THOU SHALT BE ENTERTAINING AT ALL TIMES. THOU SHALT OBEY THY ARTISTIC CONSCIENCE AT ALL TIMES. THOU SHALT MAKE EACH FILM AS IF IT WERE THY LAST.

Film as dream, film as music. No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul. A little twitch in our optic nerve, a shock effect: twenty-four illuminated frames a second, darkness in between, the optic nerve incapable of registering darkness.

Either I did away with that fear through writing, or in the course of writing, I discovered it was no longer so intrusive or threating. The bottom line is, it's gone.

I want knowledge. Not belief. Not surmise. But knowledge. I want God to put out His hand, show His face, speak to me.

No form of art goes beyond ordinary consciousness as film does, straight to our emotions, deep into the twilight room of the soul.