Virtue is not photogenic. What is it to be a nice guy? To be nothing, that's what. A big fat zero with a smile for everybody.

When I made Spartacus during the McCarthy Era, we were losing our freedom. It was an awful, awful way. McCarthy saw Communists everywhere, in every level of government and they concentrated on Hollywood and especially on Hollywood writers.

I felt [It Runs in the Family] it was a picture that, after I'm gone, my family would like to see it. It was a wonderful mixture of people in my family.

My mother and my father were illiterate immigrants from Russia. When I was a child they were constantly amazed that I could go to a building and take a book on any subject. They couldn't believe this access to knowledge we have here in America. They couldn't believe that it was free.

A stroke is a very difficult thing. You get depressed. . . . What I found was this: the cure for depression is to think of others, to do for others. You can always find something to be grateful for.

If I thought a man had never committed a sin in his life, I don't think I'd want to talk with him. A man with flaws is more interesting.

I know Italians and I like them. A lot of my father's best friends were Italians.