The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale: to an observer in the Andromeda nebula, the sign of our extinction would be no more than a match flaring for a second in the heavens: and if that match does blaze in the darkness there will be none to mourn a race that used a power that could have lit a beacon in the stars to light its funeral pyre. The choice is ours.

One does not have to make Frank Capra movies to like people.

Everybody has their black moments.

The reality of the final moment, just before shooting [the scene], is so powerful that all previous analysis must yield before the impressions you receive under these circumstances, and unless you use this feedback to your positive advantage, unless you adjust to it, adapt to it and accept the sometimes terrifying weaknesses it can expose, you can never realize the most out of your film.

You're an idealist, and I pity you as I would the village idiot.

I never learned anything at all in school and didn't read a book for pleasure until I was 19 years old.

I don't like doing interviews. There is always the problem of being misquoted or, what's even worse, of being quoted exactly.