[The Player is] not a truthful indictment of Hollywood. It's much uglier than I portrayed it, but nobody would've been interested if I'd shown just how sadistic, cruel and self-orientated it is.

The minute you have more than one voice, you have more possibilities opening up. You have all the molecules in all of those bodies and their make up interacting.

Chance is another name that we give to our mistakes. And all of the best things in my films are mistakes.

If something works for you, you continue to do it. I did a bunch of pictures for 20th Century Fox when Alan Ladd was over there, but I set the budgets so low that they'd approve and I'd deliver the film. They would have no say in it, which is the kind of arrangement I liked.

What is an ending? There's no such thing. Death is the only ending.

Your own ego is the only trap that I think you can fall into.

There was not a lot of dialogue. The titles were just to keep you up. It's the visual stimulation that hits the audience. That's the reason for film. Otherwise, we might as well turn the light out and call it radio.