One of the worst things you can do is have a limited budget and try to do some big looking film. That's when you end up with very bad work.

There are eleven or twelve or thirteen cities in China with populations of over 10 million people and most people in the West have never even heard of these cities.

In order to create art today, you have to compromise your art somewhat and be a businessman.

Martin Scorsese was one of the few who had not been an assistant. Most of the guys had been an assistant and worked their way up. But I had seen an underground picture he had made in New York, a black-and-white film. I had done a picture for American International, about a Southern woman bandit, the Ma Barker story, and it was very successful, and I had left to start my own company, and they wanted me to make another one.

There's always something that draws you away from the original script.

In science-fiction films the monster should always be bigger than the leading lady.

When I started in the late 1950s, every film I made - no matter how low the budget - got a theatrical release. Today, less that 20-percent of our films get a theatrical release.