In making movies, time is so short-because it is so expensive-that we tend to neglect the place from which the best ideas come, namely that part of ourselves that dreams. The unconscious is our best collaborator.

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.

Being with an insanely jealous person is like being in the room with a dead mammoth.

I came to love silence, because it's so rare, and it's now my favorite aural condition.

I have never understood people dividing things into dramas and comedies.

Nerves provide me with energy... It's when I don't have them, when I feel at ease, that's when I get worried.

All the theories that acting is reacting to imaginary circumstances as though they are real, and directing is turning psychology into behavior, those are all stabs at something that can't be taught. All the great actors can't talk about what they do, and they don't want to begin to talk about it. They just do it.