I wanted to entertain so badly that I kept at it until I was good. I just browbeat my way into show business.

Basically, I'm a writer. I'm the proprietor of the vision. I alone know what I eventually want to happen on the screen. So if you have a valuable idea, the only way to protect it is to direct it.

That's it baby, if you've got it, flaunt it.

All right, I am often brash, rude and brutally direct. Someday I'm going to die and I don't have time to toe-dance around the periphery of hatred.

I was in the army, and to me it was like a newsreel.

Every human being has hundreds of separate people living under his skin.

I'm always stunned when I find out people like Roosevelt and Tolstoy weren't Jewish. How could I love them so much?