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.

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

There's the generation that made the rules, the generation that codified them. The generation that broke them - that's mine. The generation that laughed at them - that's Tarantino's. And now there's a generation that doesn't know that there were any.

Film noir is not a genre. It is not defined, as are the western and gangster genres, by conventions of setting and conflict, but rather by the more subtle qualities of tone and mood. It is a film 'noir', as opposed to the possible variants of film gray or film off-white.

There's no escape. I'm God's only man.

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.

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.