Always get to the set or the location early, so that you can be all alone and draw your inspiration for the blocking and the setups in private and quiet. In one sense, it's about protecting yourself; in another sense, it's about always being open to surprise, even from the set, because there may be some detail that you hadn't noticed. I think this is crucial. There are many pictures that seem good in so many ways except one: They lack a sense of surprise, they've never left the page.

There are times when you have to face your enemies, sit down and deal with it.

Vic Armstrong is, of course, a legend

I was saying as a joke the other day that I love film editing, I know how to cut a picture, I think I know how to shoot it, but I don't know how to light it. And I realize it's because I didn't grow up with light. I grew up in tenements.

Watching a Kubrick film is like gazing up at a mountaintop. You look up and wonder, how could anyone have climbed that high?

If you don’t like the films of Samuel Fuller , then you just don’t like cinema.

I loved the idea of seeing the world through a boy's eyes.