Even when I read a book, if the book leaves me the possibility of finding certain solutions or working on my own toward a solution, I prefer that much more than if the book fills me with the answers, gives them to me directly.

The Jesuits use this kind of training, or, let's say it this way: The Jesuit General imposes this kind of structure; he encourages the young men to specialize. Because getting ten of them together, you have the best of everything. But this does not mean that this system is good for the Jesuits all over. They're all available to the cause.

I was born in 1929, and in the 50 years from 1930 to 1980, I've been able to live an unbelievably varied century. Before, you could never have seen such intense change in a 50-year span.

America is so varied and exciting that after six months, you go back and find it completely changed.

There's my pessimism. Because I didn't know yet that type of film is always going to become more extinct, that there won't be anymore. Because there will always be more films that win five Oscars like Terms of Endearment.

Charlie Chaplin, too, through spectacle, contraband certain ideas, put them through, ideas that even today are not being expressed by great statesmen and politicians.

When I used a woman in my films or wrote a woman into my film, I wanted her to be a central point and a motivating point or a catalyst to function in the film.