We only have two hours to change people's lives.

No matter how old you get, if you can keep the desire to be creative, you're keeping the man-child alive.

You can defeat fear through humor, through pain, through honesty, bravery, intuition, and through love in the truest sense.

I’ve never seen an exploding helicopter. I’ve never seen anybody go and blow somebody’s head off. So why should I make films about them? But I have seen people destroy themselves in the smallest way, I’ve seen people withdraw, I’ve seen people hide behind political ideas, behind dope, behind the sexual revolution, behind fascism, behind hypocrisy, and I’ve myself done all these things. So I can understand them. What we are saying is so gentle. It’s gentleness. We have problems, terrible problems, but our problems are human problems.

The camera is the slave to the actor.

My films are expressive of a culture that has had the possibility of attaining material fulfillment while at the same time finding itself unable to accomplish the simple business of conducting human lives. We have been sold a bill of goods as a substitute for life. What is needed is reassurance in human emotions; a re-evaluation of our emotional capacities.

I won't make shorthand films, because I don't want to manipulate audiences into assuming quick, manufactured truths.