That's just my disposition - to create a situation where you have to come up with something.

Now I see it clearly. My whole life has pointed in one direction. I see that now. There never has been any choice for me.

You know, when you're in your twenties you use a great deal of symbolism. You somehow think that a character standing beneath a cross is more interesting than a character standing underneath a billboard, but when you get a little older you realize that there's not much difference.

The clock is impotent; mechanical time does not affect those living in an eternal present.

'Taxi Driver' wasn't autobiographical in terms of the actual events, but I did draw on my own mental state.

Because many of the films I've made have had an intellectualedge, it's harder for me to lie. It's harder for me to go to peoplewith money and say I don't care about art, all I care about iscommerce; all I really want to do is make money.

I would not have made any of my films or written scripts such as Taxi Driver had it not been for Ingmar Bergman, What he has left is a legacy greater than any other director.... I think the extraordinary thing that Bergman will be remembered for, other than his body of work, was that he probably did more than anyone to make cinema a medium of personal and introspective value.