Sir, I have seen your film and it is vulgar! Madame, my film rises below vulgarity.

When you come to Germany as a Jew you have an uneasy feeling, but I've always felt okay in Berlin.

If Ivan the Terrible had been kissed and loved between zero and three, he probably would have become Ivan Not So Terrible. If you're Jewish, you have a small smile on your face. Because you know the rest are wrong and you don't want to hurt their feelings.

I like people with big talents and small neuroses - not always an easy combination to find. I've discovered that if the neurosis is too big, it diminishes the talent and you wind up working too hard for what you get.

But I have bad taste with a deep fount of intellectuality.

No creative writer knows what is commercial and what isn't. You just write from your heart, you write from the deepest, creative urges in you, and you write from your soul, and you just either get lucky or not.

Being short never bothered me for three seconds. The rest of the time I wanted to commit suicide.