What you try to become is a bringer of magic, for magic and the truth are closely allied and movies are sheer magic ... when they work, it's, well, it's glorious.

Crime is a left- handed form of human endeavor.

When you make motion pictures, each picture is a life unto itself. When you finish and the picture is over, there's an understanding, a realization that we'll never be assembled this way again. That these relationships are severed forever and ever. And each of these films is a little life.

Most people never have to face the fact that at the right time and the right place they're capable of anything.

Marilyn was one step from oblivion when I directed her in The Asphalt Jungle. I remember she impressed me more off the screen than on…there was something touching and appealing about her.

Each picture with its particular environment and unique personal relationships is a world unto itself - separate and distinct. Picture makers lead dozens of lives - a life for each picture. And, by the same token, they perish a little when each picture is finished and that world comes to an end. In this respect it is a melancholy occupation.

For sheer strength of character, I wouldn't have dared to cross swords with Callas. I would rather have gone six rounds with Jack Dempsey.