Jewish introspection and Jewish humor is a way of surviving . . . if you're not handsome and you're not athletic and you're not rich, there's still one last hope with girls, which is being funny.

I love the editing process of making movies. I just wish that life had one.

Will we allow the decline of our language-the language of Shakespeare, Shaw and Steinbeck? Will we abuse our precious gift of communication? Will we bite our mother tongue with the teeth of indifference, crushing the taste buds of clarity and, without prompt application of the antiseptic of education, causing the gangrene of strained metaphors? Stand up, America, and let me hear your answer: Ain't no way, dude!

Directing is mystifying. It's a long, long, skid on an icy road, and you do the best you can trying to stay on the road... If you're still here when you come out of the spin, it's a relief. But you've got to have the terror if you're going to do anything worthwhile.

It's not a filmmaker's job to explain his technique but to tell his story the best way he can.

That seems to me the greatest American danger we're all in, that we'll bargain away the experience of being alive for the appearance of it.

There's nothing in the American dream about character. It's a serious flaw.