I was invited to join the MGM cartoon department. But if I'd started work in animation I'd have had to take a cut in salary, so I didn't.

Even in the most sophisticated person, it is the primitive eye that watches the film.

A star on a movie set is like a time bomb. That bomb has got to be defused so people can approach it without fear.

And this, incidentally, is my thumbnail sketch of American marriage: A woman sees a man; she likes him. Now she jumps on this thing and rides it to some kind of standstill. Then she changes it and trains it, and to the exact degree that she's able to do this, she disrespects him.

I'm against cronyism, and I had to learn that early on. Like, I don't have an entourage, because I saw the negative effects of those things.

Before I moved into the mainstream of American movies, I wrote a script as an experiment. I wanted to get very far away from the clichés about the three-act play - structure, development.

What's beautiful is all that counts, pal. That's ALL that counts.