In a foreign country people don't expect you to be just like them, but in Los Angeles, which is infiltrating the world, they don't consider that you might be different because they don't recognize any values except their own. And soon there may not be any others.

Vulgarity is not as destructive to an artist as snobbery.

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

Television as we have it isn't an art form - it's a piece of furniture that is good for a few things.

If there's anything to learn from the history of movies, it's that corruption leads to further corruption, not to innocence.

For perhaps most Americans, TV is an apppliance, not to be used selectively but to be turned on - there's always something to watch.

In San Francisco, vulgarity, "bad taste," ostentation are regarded as a kind of alien blight, an invasion or encroachment from outside. In Los Angeles, there is so much money and power connected with ostentation that is no longer ludicrous: it commands a kind of respect. For if the mighty behave like this, then quiet good taste means that you can't afford the conspicuous expenditures, and you become a little ashamed of your modesty and propriety.