A book might be written on the injustice of the just.

He [Bernardo Bertolucci] has the kind of talent that breaks one's heart: where can it go, what will happen to it? In this country we encourage 'creativity' among the mediocre, but real bursting creativity appalls us. We put it down as undisciplined, as somehow 'too much.' Well, Before the Revolution is too much and that is what is great about it. Art doesn't come in measured quantities: it's got to be too much or it's not enough.

I believe that we respond most and best to work in any art form (and to other experience as well) if we are pluralistic, flexible, relative in our judgments, if we are electic.

Great movies are rarely perfect movies.

It's sometimes discouraging to see all of a director's movies, because there's so much repetition. The auteurists took this to be a sign of a director's artistry, that you could recognize his movies. But it can also be a sign that he's a hack.

If it took some effort to see old movies, we might try to find out which were the good ones, and if people saw only the good ones maybe they would still respect old movies. As it is, people sit and watch movies that audiences walked out on thirty years ago.

Being creative is having something to sell, or knowing how to sell something, or having sold something. It has taken over what we used to mean by being "wised up" knowing the tricks, the shortcuts.