Really, it's not people who don't understand us who drive us nuts—it's when those who shouldn't, do.

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?

In the arts, the critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising.

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.

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

Kevin Costner has feathers in his hair and feathers in his head. The Indians should have called him 'Plays with Camera.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.