Today I believe that man cannot escape his destiny to create whatever it is we make - jazz, a wooden spoon, or graffiti on the wall. All of these are expressions of man's creativity, proof that man has not yet been destroyed by technology. But are we making things for the people of our epoch or repeating what has been done before? And finally, is the question itself important? We must ask ourselves that. The most important thing is always to doubt the importance of the question.

It would be so much better if the critics would come, not on first nights, but on last nights, when they could exercise their undoubted flair for funeral orations.

I worry a lot about taking care of my dependents, all those perfectly ordinary middle-class preoccupations.

[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 don't think any word can explain a man's life.

The best thing commercially, which is the worst artistically, by and large, is the most successful.

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