Citizen Kane is perhaps the one American talking picture that seems as fresh now as the day it opened. It may seem even fresher.

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

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.

There is something spurious about the very term 'a movie made for TV,' because what you make for TV is a TV program.

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.

Movies, far more than the traditional arts, are tied to big money. Without a few independent critics, there's nothing between the public and the advertisers.