For a while in the twenties and thirties, art was talked about as a substitute for religion; now B movies are a substitute for religion.

Protagonists are always loners, almost by definition.

The worst thing about movie-making is that it's like life: nobody can go back to correct the mistakes.

Television represents what happens to a medium when the artists have no power and the businessmen are in full, unquestioned control.

What this generation was bred to at television's knees was not wisdom, but cynicism.

Great movies are rarely perfect movies.

There seems to be an assumption that if you're offended by movie brutality, you are somehow playing into the hands of the people who want censorship. But this would deny those of us who don't believe in censorship the use of the only counter-balance: the freedom of the press to say that there's anything conceivably damaging in these films - the freedom to analyze their implications. How can people go on talking about the dazzling brilliance of movies and not notice that the directors are sucking up to the thugs in the audience?