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

I’m frequently asked why I don’t write my memoirs. I think I have.

Great movies are rarely perfect movies.

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.

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.

It is a depressing fact that Americans tend to confuse morality and art (to the detriment of both) and that, among the educated, morality tends to mean social consciousness.

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.