Where there is a will, there is a way. If there is a chance in a million that you can do something, anything, to keep what you want from ending, do it. Pry the door open or, if need be, wedge your foot in that door and keep it open.

Movies have been doing so much of the same thing - in slightly different ways - for so long that few of the possibilities of this great hybrid art have yet been explored.

Imagining [The Wizard of Oz] without Judy Garland is a bit like dancing on wet cement: you can do it, but why would you want to?

Television represents what happens to a medium when the artists have no power and the businessmen are in full, unquestioned control.

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.

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

Movies that are consciously life-affirming are to be consciously avoided.