If you've noticed that I don't use long takes, it's not because I don't like them, but because no one gives me the necessary means to treat myself to them. It's more economical to make one image, then this image and then that image, and try to control them later, in the editing studio.

Hollywood expects you to experiment but on a film that makes money and if you don't make money, you're to blame. Your job is to make money.

I'm not a walking extra in a Chekhov play; I'm no Slavic gloom or Irish gloom. I mark only the happy hours, like the sundial, because otherwise I would have gone nuts.

Ignorance sheer ignorance. There is no confidence to equal it. It's only when you know something about a profession that you are timid or careful.

There are a thousand ways of playing a good classic. If it were effective, I would play Hamlet on a trapeze.

Create your own visual style... let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.

Almost all serious stories in the world are stories of failure with a death in it. But there is more lost paradise in them than defeat.