[The movies] make the sort of comment only a novel can make, an allusion to the world in which people live, the psychological and economic motivations, the influences of the period in which they lived.

I am essentially a hack, a commercial person. If I had a hobby, I would immediately make money on it or abandon it.

I have no great message to the world.

My kind of director is an actor-director who writes.

Anybody who speaks quietly and shrivels up in company is unbelievably arrogant.

Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations.

Only very intelligent people don't wish they were in politics, and I'm dumb enough to want to be in there.