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

That wasn't an ending. It was just a stopping point.

I was a heavy drinker, but the alcohol affected my heart rather than my liver. So I stopped. I smoke grass now. I say that to everybody, because marijuana should be legalized. It's ridiculous that it isn't. If at the end of the day I feel like smoking a joint I do it. It changes the perception of what I've been through all day.

Titanic I thought was the most dreadful piece of work I've ever seen in my entire life. Another film that I think is equally bad was American Beauty. So badly acted and directed. But people like that.

All of my films deal with the same thing: striving, socially and culturally, to stay alive.

The artist and the multitude are natural enemies. They always will be, both ways. The artist is an enemy of the multitude, and the multitude is the enemy of the artist. And when the disguise comes off and they're both standing facing one another, they're just there at odds end.

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.