Economy, speed, nervousness, and desperation produce the final wasteful, semi-incoherent movies we see.

Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.

The problem with a popular art form is that those who want something more are in a hopeless minority compared with the millions who are always seeing it for the first time, or for the reassurance and gratification of seeing the conventions fulfilled again.

At the movies, we are gradually being conditioned to accept violence as a sensual pleasure. The directors used to say they were showing us its real face and how ugly it was in order to sensitize us to its horrors. You don't have to be very keen to see that they are now in fact desensitizing us.

Her only flair is in her nostrils.

A mistake in judgment isn't fatal, but too much anxiety about judgment is.

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.